


Just for a week

by kryptidkat



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Smoking, alcohol mention, found family slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22020808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptidkat/pseuds/kryptidkat
Summary: Party Poison wanted a record needle. He got a little more than he bargained for.When Cherri Cola rescues a two-year-old girl from a wrecked car on Route Guano, Dr. Death-Defying makes a deal with the Fab Four.Chapter 1 is Cherri's POV, the rest is in Jet's.
Relationships: Fun Ghoul & Jet Star & Kobra Kid & Motorbaby & Party Poison (Danger Days), Fun Ghoul & Jet Star & Kobra Kid & Party Poison (Danger Days), Fun Ghoul & Jet Star (Danger Days), Fun Ghoul & Kobra Kid (Danger Days), Fun Ghoul & Party Poison (Danger Days), Fun Ghoul & the Girl, Jet Star & Kobra Kid (Danger Days), Jet Star & Party Poison (Danger Days), Jet Star & the Girl, Kobra Kid & Party Poison (Danger Days), Kobra Kid & the Girl, Party Poison & Jet Star & Kobra Kid & Fun Ghoul & the Girl, Party Poison & The Girl
Comments: 124
Kudos: 126





	1. Prologue

Cherri left Z-3 already bored out of his mind. Seven hundred forty-six and a half telephone poles later (he had no idea what had happened to the other half) he was even more bored, if that was possible. He stopped counting telephone poles and switched to cacti. 

He didn’t mind the boredom, though, because he was almost at Tommy’s and he hadn’t run into any trouble yet, for once. That was a nearly impossible feat on a drive this long. Just statistically. The windshield of his rusty blue truck was long gone but he didn’t mind the wind in his face, either, and he was driving pretty fast even with a heavy load of supplies in the back.

So fast he almost didn’t see the body in the road in time. The brakes squealed as he stomped on them, the sudden momentum throwing him against the steering wheel. 

Cherri barely paused long enough to kill the truck engine before he scrambled out to the prone figure sprawled facedown and motionless on the asphalt. 

“Hey! Hey. You okay?” He gently took their shoulder and rolled them over.

A grotesque draculoid mask leered back at him. 

Cherri stumbled back, groping for a gun that wasn’t there—of course it wasn’t, that was exactly why he kept it in his pack and not in a belt holster anymore—and when the drac stayed motionless, he grabbed for the rosary around his neck instead and sucked in a breath, fighting back every impulse he had to grind the monster’s face into the pavement with his boot like it deserved.

Not this again. _Hail Mary, full of gr_ —they would hunt down every last one of the bast— _Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is_ —raised to fight, born to kill— _Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou and_ — _and_ — there is no peace without war, there is no peace without war, there is no peace without—

_HailMaryfullofgracetheLordiswiththeeblessedartthouamongwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombJesus_

“Holy Mary, mother of God,” Cherri gritted out aloud to himself, wincing at the ringing in his ears, “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Shit. I mean, amen.”

The ringing began to subside. Feeling a little more grounded, he automatically scanned his surroundings. There was no movement in the desert around him. 

No more of them, then. Cherri sucked in another shaky breath. 

It’d been a long time since it was that bad. Usually he had some kind of warning, some time to steel himself. A distant laser blast, or an alert over the radio. Something. 

He took a minute, focusing on the smooth, worn beads between his fingers. The grit crunching under his boots. The hot sun beating down on the back of his neck. The idling of the truck’s engine. 

Once he could breathe a little easier, he ventured another look at the drac. Now he saw black tire marks cutting across its body, stark against the white of its suit, like something out of a cartoon. It would have been almost comical if it wasn’t so gruesome. 

At first he’d thought the thing must have been a straggler done in by the heat, but that was clearly not the case. Someone had run it over. In a clap, maybe, though there was no other sign of a skirmish…

A distant, thin cry split the air. 

Cherri’s head jerked up, nerves jangling again. The hell?

It sounded almost like a kid. 

Drac forgotten, he took off toward the sound. 

He vaguely registered passing a few more bodies scorched with laser burns as he ran. More dracs, just as still as the first, so he ignored them and kept going.

Just around the bend he stopped short. A red Camaro had rolled to a stop halfway off the road, smoke beginning to curl up from under the hood. The pavement was streaked with black tire marks—two vehicles’ worth at least, though there was only one here.

Some kind of chase, and it hadn’t ended well.

Cherri sprinted the rest of the way and wrenched open the driver’s door. A blaster fell from the driver’s limp hand and clattered to the pavement.

The young brown-skinned woman it belonged to had black curls with a red streak and a mask to match.

Cherri gripped her arm. “Hey, joy. Can you hear me? We gotta get you out of he…”

The woman’s head lolled. There was a charred hole burned through her skull, right between open eyes staring right through him.

Cherri’s breath caught in his throat. 

Early on, several people had told him it would get easier.

The worst part was they were right.

So Cherri didn’t linger. It was awful and it sucked and it was wrong, but there was nothing left to do for her now except make sure she found her way safely.

He gently slipped off the joy’s mask. He wished he knew her name.

He was murmuring a quick blessing—as much for his own peace of mind as for her—when he heard that sound again. Was there someone else in the car?

Cherri dashed around to the other side.

Shit. There was a kid in the backseat. A _young_ kid, no older than two, maybe younger, and the woman’s daughter by the look of it.

She stirred dazedly against her seatbelt. Either she was in shock or she must have only just begun to regain consciousness after being knocked out on impact.

“Uh, hey. Hey, sweetheart,” he said, calmly as he could manage, shoving the woman’s mask into his back pocket. “Just…just hang on, okay?”

He had to get her out of here before she properly woke up and saw her mother. But should he move her? Could he? What if something was broken and he paralyzed the poor kid or something?

 _Whoomph_.

Cherri whipped his head around. Flames were flickering up from beneath the hood now.

Well, that settled it.

“Alright, time to go,” Cherri said. He couldn’t get this door open—there was a massive dent in it, like it had gotten sideswiped by one of the BL/Ind vehicles. The window was shot out, though.

He reached in to fumble the seatbelt off her and lifted her out of the broken glass, supporting her head best he could with one hand.

Big startled hazel eyes locked onto him, but she didn’t start crying. Probably a good sign that she didn’t have any serious injuries. He pulled her through the window with a grunt, carefully avoiding the jagged edge. “Come on, that’s it. You’re heavier than you look, huh.”

He awkwardly shifted her over to one hip and gave the interior of the car a quick scan for anything else he ought to save, but the back of his neck started prickling.

He clutched the girl close and took off at a run back the way he came, boots pounding on the asphalt, trying to keep from jostling her too badly. He didn’t have much time. Wasn’t sure there was any point in running at all.

The thought came to him that if he got thrown forward now, the baby would get crushed beneath him.

So he was only a half dozen yards away when he dropped to his knees and pulled the girl’s head into his chest, palm clamped tight to the side of her head to protect her ears from the impending noise best he could, curling his body around her instinctively, the same way he had been drilled in another life to take a grenade.

But no explosion came. Just another quiet whoomph.

He risked a glance over his shoulder. The rest of the car had gone up in flames.

He sighed and slid his hand around to shield the kid’s eyes from the sight, heaving himself to his feet to watch the fire crackle and lick at the skeleton of the car.

“She went out fighting,” he murmured to the all-too-quiet toddler. “And she kept you safe. There’s worse ways to go.”

It was as fitting a pyre as any for a killjoy, whoever she was, but his heart still weighed heavy in his chest. At least he’d had the presence of mind to take her mask.

“Take pity on those souls who have no particular friends and intercessors to recommend them to thee,” Cherri murmured, “Who, dum de dum te dum, through the length of time are forgotten, spare them oh Lo—no, _by their friends and by all_ , spare them, oh Lord, and remember thine own mercy when others forget to appeal to it…Oh yeah, and let not the souls which thou has created be parted from thee their creator. May the souls of all the faithful departed—and fuck it, the not-so-faithful departed too, while you’re at it, if you wouldn’t mind—through the mercy of God rest in peace.”

He looked down ruefully at the baby curled up in his arms.

“I know, I know,” he said. “Should’ve stuck to the Saints Protect Her, huh.” It’d been a while since he’d come across any bodies. He supposed he should be glad to be out of practice with that one. 

The smell of charred flesh was beginning to waft in their direction. His heart sank for the kid. At least she wasn’t screaming for her mother. Yet.

He couldn’t bear to watch anymore, so he turned and headed back toward his truck. They got about halfway before his head started spinning. Adrenaline crash, shiny, just what he needed. He wished he had something to lean on, something to hold on to. 

But there wasn’t another soul around, it was just him and he was alone, alone, alone—usually it was better that way and yet in moments like this he couldn’t help but wish, a little, for a crewmate or two. And here he was with only drac corpses sprawled out mummifying in the scorching sun for company, underneath enough blue sky to drown in...

What the hell was he doing? What was he supposed to do with a newly orphaned infant? Him, of all people? This wasn’t safe, this wasn’t safe at all. _He_ wasn’t safe for her. 

He couldn’t think about that right now. 

Get to the truck. He just had to get back to the truck. 

He gritted his teeth and walked on, keeping his palm over the child’s eyes. She shouldn’t see the drac carnage they were passing. He shouldn’t look, either.

_Eyes front, soldier._

Dammit, no more of that, not today. Cherri gave his head a sharp shake to clear the voice from it. 

“Well, you’re stuck with me for now, babygirl,” he said. “Where’s the rest of your crew, anyhow? Nevermind. We’ll radio out for them in a minute.”

When they reached the truck he eased her into the passenger seat. She let out an uncertain whine and reached out for him again.

“Just a minute,” he reassured her, grabbing his pack from the backseat and rummaging through it for his transmitter. When he clicked it on, it squealed, hissed static, and went dead.

Typical.

He swapped the batteries. No luck.

Okay, new plan. Cherri tapped his fingers on the door and tried to think.

The store was so close. If he could just get back to Tommy’s, they could sort this out. Cherri could get in contact with the kid’s crew from there and they could come get her and then, then he could sit down and rest.

“Looks like we’re going for a drive.” Cherri turned his attention back to the baby. “But we can’t have you getting dehydrated.” There was still a half-full canteen of lukewarm water in the bag, which he put to her chapped lips. “There you go, drink up. Good girl. And let’s give you a little checkup too, okay?”

He was a decent field medic—out of sheer necessity as opposed to any particular knack or interest in the practice—but he’d never treated a kid before. Lord help him if she was actually hurt.

“I’m Cherri, by the way,” he said, running his fingers gingerly through her curls to feel for any bumps or swelling on her head. “Cherri Cola. Do you have a name?”

The toddler didn’t make a sound. Just followed his hands with solemn eyes as he inspected her chubby limbs as gently as he could.

“That’s all right,” Cherri said, running a hand down her spine and watching to see if she flinched. Her expression didn’t change. “Nevermind. Okay, all done. Good job, you’re so good.”

He felt a little better, now. Aside from a few bruises starting to color up on her skin and some minor cuts from glass shards, the girl seemed surprisingly unscathed. Of course, there was always the possibility of some pretty nasty internal damage, or a concussion, which he worried might be why she was being so eerily quiet, but that could just as easily be the shock.

“Well, someone up there likes you,” he said, picking her up again. “That or you’re just lucky. There’s no seatbelt over on this side, don’t ask me where it went, so you’re gonna have to ride with me.”

He slid into the driver’s seat and got her settled on his lap before turning the key. The engine roared to life.

The girl writhed in his arms with an ear-piercing shriek.

“Whoa, whoa, hey!” Cherri grabbed her to keep her from falling off his lap. “What is it? Calm down, you’re okay!” 

She was full-on screaming, tear-filled eyes wide with panic, and she flailed in Cherri’s arms like a possessed thing.

“What’s going on? Shhh, shhh, please! Shit, what did I do? Please be quiet. Come here, let’s get out for a minute, shhh, you’re okay.”

Cherri yanked the keys from the ignition, scooped the girl up and scrambled out of the cramped seat so he could try to soothe her properly. Oh Lord, he was the worst person in the world to be doing this, he didn’t know shit about children. She wasn’t hurt after all, was she? If that was it, why only raise a fuss now? Was she just hungry? Tired? Having a delayed freakout?

Feeling totally unhelpful, he tried rocking her a bit as he paced, patting her back in what he desperately hoped was a soothing manner. “Shhh, shhh. I got you.”

To his bafflement, she calmed almost immediately. A few more hesitant sobs, a hiccup or two, and she went quiet again, her little body slumping into him.

“See? You’re fine,” Cherri said, relieved. Babies were fucking weird. “Let’s try this again.”

He took a couple steps toward the truck, only for her to let out another wail. He winced. Someone so small should not be able to be so loud. He quickly turned away and started rocking her again, murmuring whatever random reassuring things he could think of.

Again, she stopped nearly as fast as she’d started.

“Oh,” Cherri said, suddenly feeling infinitely more tired as the realization hit. “it's the truck, isn’t it. Shit. Well, I don’t blame you.”

It made sense she wouldn’t want to be anywhere near a vehicle after what she’d just been through. The truck looked so different from the red Camaro that she must not have conflated the two at first, but the sound of the engine must’ve been similar enough for her to make the connection. How was he supposed to get her out of here now?

It couldn’t be that much farther to Tommy’s from here. Cherri traveled this highway a lot, and they were pretty close. Two miles, three? That was doable, if he could keep the kid from overheating.

Yeah. He could do that.

That made his next problem how he was going to get his essentials out of the truck without upsetting her. He wasn’t going anywhere with a baby in tow without some water or his gun, no matter how relatively short the trip.

He couldn’t set her down, the sand and the pavement were both too hot for that. It’d scorch her skin right off, even through her clothes.

He stood there thinking for a moment. Then he switched her from one side to the other as he shrugged out of his jacket, and draped it over her as a sort of hood. She could use the protection from the sun, anyway, and it shaded her face pretty well with the added benefit that it hid their surroundings from those big hazel eyes. 

He dashed over and snatched his pack from the truck without properly starting her off again. She squirmed with a little cry of protest, not liking being unable to see what was going on. 

The pack was stupidly heavy, but he didn’t feel like emptying it of the several cases of batteries for Tommy that were also in it. 

“Sorry, baby, we really need this,” he said, slinging it onto his shoulder to get a hand free to tug the jacket back from her face a bit so she’d stop wiggling. “We have a long walk ahead, and it’s not gonna get any cooler out here for a while so we might as well get going.” 

He set off down the road, even further away from his truck, his only haven from the sun overhead. The beautiful, beautiful sun. 

The universe sure had a cruel sense of humor.

~~~

The bells of Tommy’s shop jangled as Cherri stumbled inside. The store, for once, was unoccupied, except for Tommy Chow Mein himself, who looked up as Cherri came in.

“What the hell,” Tommy said, “is that.”

Cherri looked at the jacket-swaddled toddler bundled in his arms, to his pack hanging from one arm, to Tommy again.

“The…the batteries you ordered?” he offered.

Tommy lifted an eyebrow, but he didn’t point out the obvious. “You’re late. And you look like shit.”

“Thanks.” Cherri glanced around the shop. For lack of anywhere better to sit, he plopped down cross-legged right there and tipped the batteries out of his pack onto the floorboards.

Tommy considered him for a moment, then grabbed a bottle of water from behind the counter and walked over.

Cherri reached for it gratefully.

Tommy took a sip, leaving Cherri’s hand outstretched. “What happened to your truck?” he demanded.

Classic Tommy. Cherri let his arm drop. “Nothing.”

“What?”

Cherri was too tired to flinch under Tommy’s scrutiny. He was used to it, anyway. “Never mind. Long story.”

Tommy considered him for several long seconds more, then retrieved another bottle and handed it over. “The shipment?”

“Still in it, far as I know.” Cherri automatically raised the bottle to his mouth, then checked himself. Kid first. He pulled the jacket off her head and let her drink some, which she did happily. He poured a little on his sleeve as well, so he could give her sort of a spongedown and cool her off a bit. Better safe than sorry—she didn’t feel _too_ warm, but they were both sweaty and gross by now from a long afternoon in the sun. It’d probably been good for him to have the exposure, actually. He should be working to keep his tolerance up, because to some extent being outdoors was simply unavoidable, but he’d kind of been avoiding it of late. Easier that way. 

Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “You better get on that before scavengers find it. The buyers are coming tomorrow.”

Cherri nodded. Tell him something he didn’t know.

“Whose is that, anyway? I didn’t take you for a babysitter.”

Cherri felt his temper wearing thin. “I am having a singularly bad day, okay?” he snapped. “I pulled her out of a burning wreck and her mom was shot to hell by a royal shitton of dracs and I walked the rest of the way which was like, three fucking miles because I couldn’t get her anywhere near my running truck without her screaming bloody murder. Can you please lend me a radio.”

Tommy wasn’t even listening. He was peering out the window. “Customers incoming. Get that thing out of here.”

“Are you shitting me? Tommy, my transmitter died and I just need a—”

“I said, scram. Take her to D’s and have him put the call out. That’s where they’d make the pickup anyway.” Tommy crossed over to the coat rack and pulled on his suitjacket.

Cherri sighed. He shouldn’t have expected anything else. And he hated to admit it, but Tommy was right.

He looked down at the baby. She was dead weight in his arms, totally zonked out. Poor thing. Oh, wait, shit, shouldn’t he be keeping her awake in case of a concussion or something?

He gave her a few gentle experimental bounces, but she stayed out.

So much for that. Maybe it was just as well. At least this way she wasn’t yelling.

Cherri clambered to his feet and studied the nearest row of goods. The kid was going to be ravenous when she woke up, and God help whoever had her by then if they didn’t have any food on them. She could have solid food by now, probably? Powerpup was likely the safest bet, easy to chew with lots of nutrients.

“I’m taking these,” he said, managing to grab a couple cans with the hand that wasn’t holding the kid and drop them into his pack along with what was left of the water Tommy had given him. “Take ‘em out of my payment.”

“I’ll be taking a lot more out of you than your payment if I don’t get that shipment."

Unbelievable. This was exactly why Cherri wasn’t a fulltime zonerunner for Tommy. Yeah, Chow Mein had saved his life more than once, but that didn’t make the store owner any less of an insufferable bastard.

Cherri made for the door before he said something he would regret. “Later, skinflint.”

“Cola.”

Hand already on the doorknob, Cherri paused. “What.”

Another bottle of water came at him, which Cherri barely managed to free a hand in time to catch. Someone’s stetson from the coat rack came at him too, landing skewed on his head. 

“I, uh. “Tommy cleared his throat. “Hope you find them.”

Right, her crew. Cherri sighed again. “Thanks. Me too.”

Tommy turned away to mess with a display and Cherri went out, easing the door shut quietly behind him so as not to disturb the toddler.

“Tommy’s not so bad, see?” he murmured conversationally. “He’ll get on your nerves and make you think he doesn’t give a shit, but he’s a big softie, really. If we stayed he _probably_ wouldn’t have tried to put you on a shelf and sell you, but it’s just as well we’re headed to Doc’s. You know, just in case.” 

He was getting funny looks from the colorful gang of burners that had just pulled up. He gave them a friendly nod. One of them caught sight of the dog tags around his neck as they passed him on their way into the store and gave him an even funnier look. 

Cherri ignored them and set off toward Dr. D’s.

“Hang tight,” he said to the sleeping girl. “We’ll get you home yet, kid.”

~~~

It was only a mile or so to Dr. Death Defying’s shack (the Radio Shack, as some had affectionately dubbed it, much to the famed DJ’s chagrin), but it took what felt like forever.

He hoisted the girl higher up his side. His arms ached. She was definitely heavier than she looked.

The neon On Air sign was just flickering off as he trudged up to the door, so he didn’t worry about making noise as poked his head in. “Doc?”

Dr. D set aside his mic. “Cola, hey.”

“Doc, thank God.” Cherri’s boots suddenly felt like bricks on his feet; he stumbled inside, nearly tripping on the threshold. “Listen, you’ve got to put a call out for this kid, my radio died and I don’t know who—"

Dr. D held up a hand to cut him off. “Put on the brakes there, redliner. Sit before you fall.”

Cherri obediently sank into a nearby chair, shoving the pile of records on it to one side. There were albums and recording paraphernalia heaped everywhere in haphazard stacks. It looked disorganized, but it was actually a complex, meticulously organized system of Dr. D’s own devising.

He was suddenly so, so tired. “Could you…? Just for a minute…”

“Uh. Yeah. Sure.” Dr. D maneuvered his chair over and eased the sleeping girl off his lap onto his own. “Picked up a stray, huh? What happened?”

“Clap. Wreck. Walked.”

Dr. D looked grim. “There was a rumor about that going around the airwaves. Something about a fire. No one could confirm it, though. I sent Pony to ask around. Didn’t know there was a sandpup involved. You see it happen?”

Cherri pushed his hat back. “Only the aftermath.”

“Who else?”

“Just one. Ghosted. Her mom, I think.” Cherri said. “The squad that attacked them must have left them both for dead.”

“Recognize her?”

Cherri shook his head. Wait, he had the mask, didn’t he. “Oh. Here.” He fished it out of his pocket and handed it to him.

Dr. D turned it over in his hands. “Doesn’t strike any chords, I’m afraid. You said it was in Six?”

Cherri nodded wearily. “Few miles west of here.”

Dr. D gave the mask back. “Could’ve been one of the Buzzkills. Or the Dust Devils, maybe. Big crews, too many joys for even me to keep track of.” He rolled back over to his switchboard reached for the microphone again. “Sit tight, Cola. I’ll get it on the waves. There’s got to be someone out there looking for her.”

~~~~

“Maybe they’re lying low,” Cherri said.

It was two hours later, and no one had called in. The girl was curled up on Cherri’s jacket on the floor. Still sleeping, thank God. Cherri desperately wanted a nap himself about now, but his mind was still racing too fast for that.

“Maybe,” Dr. D said. He didn’t sound hopeful.

“A single mother?” Cherri tried to wrap his brain around it. “Running the zones alone with a kid?”

“One parent’s more common than not out here, son, and a kid’s lucky to have that.”

“Maybe so, but you find other joys to run with.”

Dr. D just pulled his glasses down his nose a bit to give him a look.

Cherri scowled back. “It’s different. Besides, I don’t have a kid.”

“You might now,” Dr. D pointed out.

“No. No way,” Cherri said, starting to get overwhelmed again. Finders keepers did _not_ apply to this situation. “Doc, I can’t. You know I can’t.”

He hunched over, massaging his throbbing temples. He was a tumbleweed, he couldn’t drop everything to take care of a child. The Six burial grounds were due for a walkthrough, and the surfers in Five would be about out of water by now, the mailbox needed more candles again and now he had another mask to deliver besides, and there was a derby in two days he was supposed to run the betting pool for and dammit, Tommy’s shipment was still sitting out there on the highway ripe for the taking, if it hadn’t been looted already.

And on top of all that he in no way fit to be around anyone, really, let alone a child, for several reasons, which he’d been doing his best not to think about and somewhat succeeding at until right now…

“Breath, son,” Dr. D’s voice cut through the static in his head. That famous voice, able to fire up the most bone-weary joy with just a few steady lines of searing prose or to deliver the worst news imaginable in that same steady tone that could make you believe that somehow, despite everything, you were going to be okay. “You did a good thing today.”

Cherri blanched at him. What else was he supposed to have done? Only a monster would leave a kid in a burning car. “Like I had a choice.”

“I meant you were good with her, Cola. You did all the right things.”

“What?” said Cherri. “I’m shit with children. I was fucking terrified I’d dust her just by looking at her wrong.” 

Dr. D just chuckled. “Rest easy, kids are tough. Anyhow, we’ll think of something.”

“Aren’t there any neutral settlements nearby?” Cherri asked desperately, wracking his brain.

Dr. D snorted. “This far out in Six?”

Cherri put his head in his hands again.

“There’s always the orphanage,” Dr. D said.

“Gertie’s place? That’s four zones from here!” Cherri slumped further down into his chair, aghast at the prospect. “I’m not hauling her to fucking Z-Two on foot, D.”

“Well, she can’t stay here,” Dr. D pointed out. “I have a show to run.”

“I know,” Cherri groaned.

“DOC!” 

The door slammed and Show Pony zoomed in, skidding to a halt at the sight of the sleeping girl and immediately switching to a stage whisper with an exaggerated salute. 

“Sir, Doc, sir! Word is a firefight on wheels went all Costa Rica on Route G, some lone joy by the sound of it, no crew affiliation. Took out a whole pig squad before going dust angel, may the Witch carry her safely, sir! And there’s a baby on your floor, sir!”

“I’m aware,” Dr. D said dryly. “Cola here pulled her out of the wreck.”

Pony noticed Cherri for the first time. “Cola, sweetie! You were there?”

“After.”

“Lucky for the tyke.” Pony zoomed dangerously close to the girl and bent down to get a better look, humming sympathetically. “Tough break. Gertie taking her in?”

“That’s the thing,” Dr. D said. “Cherri says you put her in a car, she freaks.”

“Oh.” Pony pulled up short. "Not shiny. Blindfold?”

“It’s the noise too,” Cherri said. “She doesn’t need traumatizing any more than she already is. And if she cries she’ll get dehydrated and that’s too dangerous in this heat.”

“I could take her!” Pony brightened.

A vision of Show Pony hurtling down the highway at upwards of 20mph with a rickety stroller in tow flashed through Cherri’s mind.

“I, uh, don’t think that’s the best idea,” he said quickly.

“Or there’s the windcart I built!”

“That abomination? Hell no,” Dr. D interjected.

The three of them sat in glum silence.

Pony’s eyes lit up again. “What you need is a, a, a blimp, that’s it, and then you—”

“Stop. Just stop.” Cherri sagged, then sat bolt upright again. “Shit, the shipment.” How could he keep forgetting?

“Why the frown, darling?” said Pony, rolling across the room to hang over his shoulder.

“I’m going to miss a delivery, that’s all,” Cherri groaned. “Unless…” He glanced down at the rollerblades on Pony’s feet. Pony could probably get there in minutes in those things. “Hey. Do me a huge favor? My truck is a few miles down the road with a whole load of stuff in it for Tommy.”

“You got it, doll. Anything to keep a friend from getting his hide tanned by Chow Mein.”

“Thank you. You’re a godsend,” Cherri sat back, relieved.

“Oh, believe me, I know.” Pony said cheerfully, snatching up the key Cherri held out. “And they don’t call me the Pony Express for nothing, honey. I’ll have it there before old Tom can say ‘Get the hell out of my store.’ Smooch for the road? No? Alrighty then. Toodles.”

Pony zoomed off. Cherri let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He liked the skaterjunkie just fine; Pony was simply a lot to be around sometimes, and so were those hideous polka-dot tights.

“Nice thinking,” said Dr. D once they were alone again. “Pony, uh, needs to be kept busy.”

Cherri knew. Get Pony too bored, and the 2000s-pop enthusiast would definitely try to take over your channel. Sometimes even succeed, with disastrous results.

Dr. D returned to the subject at hand. “So. No crewmembers, no relatives. That complicates thi…”

The door slammed again.

Cherri felt the whole atmosphere of the room shift before he even turned to look.

If there was anyone in the zones who knew how to make an entrance a main event, it was Party Poison. He stood like a gunslinger or a rockstar, boots apart, head held high and slightly tilted at a haughty angle that gave you the impression he was looking down at you, even though he was shorter than most people. He radiated stature, somehow, and it was only if you came nose-to-nose with him that you’d realize he didn’t, in fact, have an intimidating build in the least.

Cherri had only crossed paths with him a few times before, but he would recognize that arrogant stance anywhere. Even without the blazing red hair.

What was Party Poison doing here?

“Record needles,” Poison declared. His voice was just as arrogant as his manner, authoritative, with a bit of a smoker’s rasp to it. But underlying that crackled a dormant energy as if he had some mysterious hidden power in his possession, should he care to wield it. Maybe it was just in Cherri’s imagination. It kind of creeped him out all the same. “Got any, Doctor?”

Dr. D was unfazed. “Howdy to you too, crashqueen.”

Poison clearly had no patience for pleasantries. He trailed a leather gloved finger idly down the spines of a row of record sleeves. “There ain’t no tunes on the waves worth an ear and our jukebox is on the fritz.”

Dr. D’s mouth quirked at one corner, betraying he was more amused than offended by the implied insult to his station. “Might be able to spare one. Should have a few lying around.” He made no move to look.

Poison stepped over the sleeping kid without so much as a glance to lounge against Dr. D’s desk. “Well?”

“If a joy asked nicely,” Dr. D finished.

“Mm. Too bad.” Poison leaned in. “Then I may have to go without, but let’s just say the zones can become a much more dangerous place if the silence gets too loud.”

Crashqueen, ha. More like drama queen. Cherri barely kept from rolling his eyes. Who did Poison think he was, waltzing in and making demands of Dr. D, of all people? There wasn’t a soul in the zones who didn’t owe their life to Doc for one reason or another, and Poison was no exception. 

But this was just a game Poison played, Cherri guessed. (Even, apparently, when he had no audience—unless you counted Cherri, who Poison obviously didn’t because he was regally ignoring him.)

If so, Dr. D was playing right back. “Shame,” he drawled, pivoting his chair away. “Excuse me, I have a broadcast to ma—”

The door slammed for a third time. Cherri jumped. How could the baby sleep through all this racket?

Oh, saints preserve him, the whole Fabulous Four crew was here.

The already-tiny shack seemed to shrink around him as they all trooped in. There was the giant desertborn, Jet Star (a longtime passing acquaintance of Cherri’s, though he didn’t know him especially well), who had to stoop a ridiculous amount just to get in the door, hair brushing the low ceiling of the station once he was inside. Poison’s brother Kobra Kid, tall and bleach-blond with a jawline sharp enough to kill, a motorbaby hiding a secret nerdy side behind sunglasses dark as the Devil’s soul.

And the crew’s newest addition, Fun Ghoul. All four-foot 9-inches feral bastard of him.

“What’s new, Doc?” Ghoul said, peeling off his mask.

“If you’d tune in, you’d already know,” Dr. D said.

Ghoul was already ignoring him. “Poison, we’re not waiting in the car anymore, it’s hot as hell in there. Get your shit, I wanna take Route G to see if there’s any more of those pigs we heard Chimp talkin’ about.”

“There aren’t,” Cherri said.

“You were there?” Ghoul whipped around to scrutinize him.

“Yeah,” Cherri said shortly. Close enough. He was sick of getting interrogated about this.

“Was it true the joy they were after ghosted six of ‘em singlehanded?” Kobra blurted.

Cherri had tried not to count, but that seemed about right. He nodded.

“Good riddance.” Ghoul spat on the floor, narrowly missing the baby, which he hadn't seemed to notice.

“Manners!” Jet smacked him.

“You guys need to shut up,” Poison snapped. “I’m negotiating over here.”

Dr. D let out a deep rumbling chuckle. “You aren’t negotiating shit.”

“I would be if you’d quit running your mouth with my crewmates.”

This went on for quite a while. Cherri tuned them out pretty quickly.

Kobra came over beside him. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Cherri said.

"Nice hat," Kobra said, toneless. 

Which Cherri took to mean _that is the ugliest fucking hat I've ever seen_. He was joking, though, Cherri was pretty sure. "Thanks." 

It was good to see Kobra. Really good. They hadn’t talked since the last derby, almost a month ago. They were starting to be what Cherri might dare to think of as friends, though it was still kind of hard to read what Kobra thought of _him_. “Get that brakepad thing sorted out?”

A nod. “Air filter’s getting sketchy, though.”

“I’ve got a spare, I could bring it by sometime. You all still hang out at that old diner?”

Kobra shrugged. “When we’re not kicking BL/Ind ass. Filter just needs cleaning.”

“Yeah, sand sure does a number on them. Competing at the Crashtrack this week, then?”

Another nod.

“Cool. I’ll see you there.”

Kobra rewarded him with the tiniest smile, and Cherri smiled back.

“What the hell is that,” Ghoul interrupted, recoiling as the baby on the floor stirred in her jacket nest.

“Haven’t heard that before,” Cherri said.

Dr. D broke off his bartering with Poison to wheel over and scoop her up. “Keep it down. I’ll bet Cola’ll tell you that you really don’t want to hear her scream.”

“You don’t.”

“I had no idea you were adopting,” Jet said to Dr. D. “What on Destroya’s dry earth are you doing with a baby that age?”

“Oh, she’s not mine,” Dr. D clarified hastily. “I can’t have a kid squalling during a broadcast.”

Jet looked around the shack like another crew might pop out from behind the record stacks. “Whose is she, then?”

So Cherri had to recount the misadventure all over again—coming across the crash, rescuing the baby, hauling her around on foot all day because she raised hell when he tried to start the truck, how they couldn’t get in touch with anyone who knew her mother.

By the time he was done Poison was staring at the ceiling and drumming his fingers on Dr. D’s switchboard, dangerously close to the buttons. Of course Party Poison would be bored by any story he wasn’t the subject of. “Tragic. Can we talk record needles now?”

Dr. D casually pulled out a cigar and a match, striking it centimeters from Poison’s fingers. Poison snatched his hand away.

“I’m working on a more permanent situation for her,” Dr. D said, ignoring Poison’s comment and waving the match out without lighting the cigar. “But what she really needs right now is a roof over her head for a few da…”

He trailed off and eyed the four killjoys over with a sudden pensive expression.

Cherri followed his gaze. What in the world was Dr. D—

Oh. Oh no.

“Doc…” Cherri said warily.

If Dr. D was thinking what Cherri was afraid he was, this was his worst idea yet.

“I’m saying it could work.” Dr. D glanced at him. “The drive to the diner’s short enough they actually have a chance of getting her there while she’s still sleeping.”

“Thanks, just what we need,” said Kobra. “A two-year-old sandpup with fuckin’ PTSD.” The sarcasm was brutal. 

"Wait, what?" Horror dawned on Poison’s face. “No. Absolutely not.”

Ghoul was already at the door. “If you’re looking for godsdamned nannies, you’ve got the wrong crew. C’mon, Poison. You’re wasting your time.”

“Someone will need to take her...” Jet said. 

“Cola and Doc already have 'er! The fuck, Jet! You can’t be considerin’ this.” Ghoul gestured at the baby, making no effort to hide his contempt. “That, that thing isn’t even housetrained!”

“Neither are you,” Kobra deadpanned.

It was the wrong thing to contribute to the discussion, because Ghoul apparently needed no more provocation than that to launch himself at Kobra’s throat. The two of them toppled over in a tangle of limbs.

“Two carbons on Kobra. Kick his ass,” said Poison with a lazy laugh, leaning back against the wall to enjoy the show. “What, no takers?”

“Boys! Not inside!” Dr. D barked, to no effect.

Despite all reports that the Four fought like a well-oiled machine together in a clap, watching them interact it was hard to tell that they didn’t hate each other’s guts.

“Be quiet, please, you’ll wake her up!” Cherri pleaded, looked around for something to throw at them that wasn’t a record. Was Dr. D actually prepared to hand off a child to these violent maniacs?

But Jet was already wading into the scuffle to break them apart, hauling them back by their jacket collars. This was apparently a regular occurrence because he didn’t even bother to reprimand them; just gave them a shake and let them go.

Kobra sheepishly started trying to straighten one of the record stacks they’d knocked over. Ghoul scowled and nudged the closest pile with his boot, sending it toppling.

Dr. D turned back to Jet and Poison to resume their conversation like nothing had happened. “Just for a couple weeks, boys. I’ll be putting out some feelers to the neutrals, find someone to take her in.”

“No way in hell.” Poison crossed his arms tight across his chest.

“Look at her,” Dr. D said. “Does this sweetheart seem like she’d give you any trouble?”

Cherri snorted before he could stop himself, and Dr. D shot him a warning look.

For a long moment Poison studied the baby drooling peacefully into the DJ’s shirt. Cherri thought he saw his face almost soften.

Then Poison’s steely expression returned, and he looked away with a scathing laugh. “Nah. Not for the fucking world.”

“It’s Doc,” Jet said slowly. “We owe him.”

“Jet.” Poison was glaring daggers at him, like _don’t you dare._

“One week,” Jet said to Dr. D. “Tops. Then she’s your problem again.”

“Deal.” Dr. D gave him a nod.

Ghoul stormed outside.

“Motherfucker. We’re gonna regret this,” Kobra muttered, slamming down the last record in his stack.

“I’m regretting it _now_ ,” Jet said wearily. “So what do we need to know?”

“If you keep her fed and hydrated and away from running vehicles when she’s awake, you should be shiny. Better hit the gas before she wakes up.” Dr. D rummaged in a drawer. “Here. Let’s get these on her, just in case. Might help her stay asleep.”

He managed to ease a comically large pair of noise-cancelling headphones over the girl’s head without rousing her and passed her over to the closest of them, which happened to be Poison.

Poison froze like he’d just been handed a live explosive. 

He quickly thrust her at Jet, who was forced to take her or let her drop to the floor. Jet looked around helplessly, face openly showing how far in over his head he already felt. Kobra whisked his hands behind his back lest he be next.

“Ghoul going to be a problem?” said Dr. D.

“ _I’m_ going to be _your_ problem unless you radio us the second you have someone to take this brat off our hands,” Poison spat out, pointing a threatening finger in Dr. D’s face on his way to the door.

Which didn’t answer Dr. D’s question, but Dr. D seemed satisfied.

“You’re snorting sugar if you think I’d leave a sandpup with you hooligans any longer than I have to, cherrybomb,” he said, and shooed them all out with a wave of his hand.

Cherri heard the iconic Trans Am sputter to life. He tensed, but no screaming followed. Thank God.

When the purr of the motor completely faded, he slumped in his chair again. “Seriously? The Fab Four? Kids may be tough, but I don’t know if she’s that tough.”

Dr. D turned back to his switchboard. “Don’t sweat it, Cola. Those devils aren’t near as black as they’re painted.”

Cherri rubbed at his eyes. “Whatever you say, Doc.”

Dr. D obviously trusted them for some reason, but those were _killjoys_ who’d just left with a newly orphaned infant, for fuck’s sake. Proper killjoys, the dangerous kind, the kind who went looking for claps when claps didn’t come to them fast enough. Killjoys who probably knew even less about taking care of a baby than Cherri did, and that was saying something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter the real fun starts :)
> 
> come yell at me on tumblr @ kryptidkat!


	2. DAY 1 - The Countdown Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jet gets into a ~~yelling match~~ heated discussion with the rest of the crew about his executive decision.

They got her safely back—and just in the nick of time, too. She was starting to stir restlessly in Jet’s lap as Party pulled up to the diner.

Jet bundled her inside. The crackling boombox radio on a nearby table let out a staticky squeal.

“Kill that thing!” he said, and Kobra nearly stumbled over a chair in his haste to grab it and switch it off.

Party hit the lights. They flared and flickered before coming on steady. Damn generator was acting up. Jet would have to take a look at it later. Shiny, one more thing for him to worry about. 

Not to mention the place was a disaster, per usual, with half-finished projects and haphazard piles of supplies and scavenged furniture and weaponry strewn everywhere. 

“That was a close one,” Jet said, looking down at the baby. 

“Too close,” said Party suspiciously, as if he expected a half dozen more screaming children to come crawling out of the diner’s walls.

The girl squirmed and let out a squeak.

Spurred by the sound like he was trying to stave off impending doom, Party snatched up an empty cardboard box. Catching on, Kobra raced over to Ghoul’s impressive blanket fort (permanently erected in the gap in the kitchen where the industrial dishwasher used to be) to steal a ragged quilt and stuffed it in the box, and Party plopped the box on a table.

For lack of anything better to do, Jet slipped the headphones off the baby’s head—they couldn’t be comfortable—and set her inside. The girl stretched, yawned and came properly awake.

Startled eyes searched the four (well, three; Ghoul was across the room as far away from her as he could get) faces looking down at her. When she didn’t find a familiar one, her chubby little face crumpled.

Kobra winced when the first yell hit and retreated several steps.

“Somebody do something!” said Jet, only to realize that, oh, shiny, he was somebody. He reached in to retrieve the baby and wrangled her awkwardly onto his shoulder to bounce, to no effect. “She’s probably hungry?”

He was met with blank stares.

“Well, shit,” Party said. “What do babies eat?”

“JUST BRING ME SOMETHING,” said Jet, and Party bolted into the kitchen.

Kobra snatched up the girl’s headphones and jammed them onto his own head. Jet didn’t blame him.

Party returned with the first tin he grabbed—powerpup, big surprise—and stuck a spoonful into the baby’s mouth just as she took another big inhale. Startled by this new development, she didn’t make any sound at all, and chewed the mouthful obediently. Party hastily stuffed another bite in.

Six mouthfuls later, she zonked out again.

Jet eased her back down warily. It seemed too good to be true.

When she stayed out, they all let out a collective breath of relief.

Jet turned to go to the kitchen to get another blanket to put over the kid, and stepped squarely in a puddle of something shiny on the floor.

Oh gross, he did not want to know what it was. He already had a pretty good idea who most likely culprit was, though. “Ghoul? What is this?”

Ghoul eyed it dubiously. “Lighter fluid?”

“Are you trying to get the diner burned to the ground? We’ve been over this! You’re not supposed to have any of your stuff indoors anyway!” Jet tried to step around it, and this time he nearly slipped on an unsheathed bowie knife. “Are you shitting me? This is exactly what I’m talking about!” He picked it up and shook it at the nearest of them.

Kobra blanched and snatched the headphones from his ears, alarmed and clueless as to why Jet was apparently giving him death threats, having missed the conversation thus far.

“We have to babyproof this place right now. Move it.” Jet glared around at all of them. “Chemicals, tools, anything dangerous! What are you standing there for?”

“It’s not like she can get out of the b...” Kobra began.

“I’m not the one who’s gonna ghost you six ways from Sunday if this kid eats Ghoul’s fuckin’ C4!” Jet whispered furiously, gesturing at the shocking array of weaponry cluttering the room. “You wanna answer to Doc for that? _Clean!_ ”

Everyone jumped to obey. Kobra scrambled to collect bits of his computers and half-dissected tech that was lying around. Ghoul started following a trail of dirty laundry into the kitchen, picking it up as he went.

Party scooped up an armful of spare white guns they’d looted from claps and tried to wrestle them into an empty crate without clattering them together.

“The hell is wrong with you, Jet?” he hissed, glaring daggers at him across the room. “Volunteering to fucking play house with a _sandpup?_ You turnin’ neutral on us?”

“Party, she’s a kid!” Jet whisper-yelled back. He almost slammed the knife in his hand down on a table for emphasis and caught himself at the last second. He laid it down with extra care and went to grab the pushbroom leaning in the corner.

Party grabbed another armful of guns, stacking them up in a precarious heap under his chin. “I call the shots around here and then you waltz out of Doc’s place with an, an entire child!” he said through clenched teeth, up to his neck in weaponry. Was that really safe? “What were you thinking!”

“What else were we supposed to do?” Jet started sweeping everything on the floor into a heap to deal with later. “Doc’s saved our asses more times than we can count and you want to look him in the eye and tell him no?” 

The broom bristles scraped noisily despite Jet sweeping as gingerly as possible; he winced. Sand. Dead batteries. A mouse carcass, disgusting. And good grief, was that a grenade? 

He wondered who deserved to have it shoved down their throat more—Ghoul for leaving it lying around, or Party if he didn’t shut up real soon.

“Dammit Jet, just because something needs to be done doesn’t. Mean. We need. To do it!” With some difficulty Party maneuvered his gun-heaped crate onto a high shelf.

“Oh grow up, Party! Doc promised it’d only be—”

“I DIDN’T EVEN GET MY FUCKING RECORD NEEDLE!” Party yelled, kicking the jukebox with a bang. “YOU’RE CRA—” (Kobra swiftly punched him in the gut, a much more effective method of silencing him than trying to get a hand over his mouth in time.) “Oof. The fuck, K!”

“Shut _up_ ,” Kobra hissed.

The heap of blankets in the box was stirring.

Jet froze midsweep. Everyone else did too. Party included. Like the Witch had pushed pause on a cosmic VHS player.

The blankets went still again. Thank goodness.

And Party was off again. “We’re not running a godsdamned nursery out here!” he whispered venomously. “It’s dangerous, this is no place for a kid! We’re no crew for a kid!”

Jet was just about ready to take this outside. So much for a pause button. “The world doesn’t always revolve around you, Party, and if you pulled your head out of your ass long enough to see that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation!”

Party rounded on him, spitting malice.

“You’re one to talk. You and your bleeding heart are going to get us all fucking killed someday.”

He leveraged all the conviction his voice was capable of into the words, and for a moment Jet couldn’t breathe.

The high road, Jet. Don’t engage. 

Jet clenched his jaw. If Party wanted a real fight, he wasn’t going to get it from him.

He swallowed. “I was an orphan too, you know,” he said quietly.

“Boo fuckin’ hoo,” said Party. “We’re all orphans here.”

“Oh, really?” Kobra said. “I thought Ghoul was just an asshole.” He ducked as Ghoul hurled a dirty pair of underwear in his direction and gave him the _up yours_. That’s what Jet was pretty sure he signed, anyway; it might have been something worse. Jet’s ZSL wasn’t the best.

Party ignored them and stepped closer to Jet, all menace.

“We’re killjoys,” he said, voice dropping to a growl. “We have a rebellion to run, so don’t expect me to waste away here and fucking babysit.”

Jet rested his arms on the top of his broom and dropped his head onto them briefly. “Kobra, tell your brother he can’t always have his way.”

Kobra crossed his arms tight over his chest. He looked extremely uncomfortable about getting roped into this. “What Party said.”

Fine. Jet didn't know why he had thought Kobra might take his side over his brother's, anyway. 

He set his broom down and looked round at them all in exasperation. “It’s just for a week, guys. Seven days. I’m not saying it isn’t going to be an inconvenience, but if you can’t survive a damn _baby_ for that long you’re not the crew I thought you were.”

No one would meet his eyes. Jet took that as a good sign.

Party still looked mad as hell, but the murderous energy he’d been giving off ebbed somewhat. “Seven days,” he muttered. “This better count as the first one.”

He went to go brood in the doorway, his back to the room, with the air of an innocent martyr off to the gallows.

Well, that was one blowup averted. Jet took his victories where he could. He looked around for a dustpan and frowned. He hadn’t heard a word out of Ghoul for several minutes.

Where was he, anyway? Ghoul was always up for a fight and usually the first to jump into them, even fights that had nothing to do with him to begin with. His absence from this one was extremely suspicious.

Aha. There he was in the kitchen, shoulders hunched like he was trying very hard to be invisible, and he was furtively filling up a canteen. Which could only mean…

Jet sighed. Why. Why did he put up with any of these people.

“Ghoul,” he said.

Ghoul started at the sound of his name, but he quickly recovered and began to edge toward the nearest exit, pretending he hadn’t heard.

In three strides Jet beat him to the doorway, blocking his escape.

“You’re losing your touch,” said Jet. A few months ago, Ghoul wouldn’t even thought to put off his escape long enough to grab anything, even something as essential as water.

Ghoul bared his teeth at him. “Move if you wanna keep your kneecaps.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“The hell I’m not.”

“We need you here.”

“Your mom needs me here.” Ghoul tried to duck under Jet’s arm. “This was your grand idea, spacebitch. I did not sign up for it.”

Something more was clearly bothering him than merely the prospect of being inconvenienced by this new arrival, but Jet was at a loss as to what. 

He held Ghoul back easily. “You can’t keep bolting on us,” he said under his breath, doing his best to not make a scene by chewing him out in front of the others. “Not this time.”

“Fuck you.”

Okay, Jet’d had it up to here with tantrum-throwers for the day. ( _Here_ being about chest height at the most, but whatever.) He grabbed Ghoul by the collar for the second time in the past 24 hours and tried to drag him over to the cardboard box. “Look at her, alright? It’s just a child. What is your problem?”

“Get your filthy hands off me!” Ghoul dug his heels in and thrashed violently in Jet’s grip.

His eyes were nearly black with panic. What _was_ his problem? 

“Hey. Hey!” Jet released him before he broke his own neck or something trying to slither out of his jacket. “Stop. Listen, I don’t know what’s going on with you, and I’m not going to make you help take care of her, but you’ve got to pitch in on the other stuff. This is an all-battlestations-manned situation.”

Ghoul backed away. “That _you_ got us into! I’m not goin’ within 20 feet of that thing!”

“Good!”

“Make up your fuckin’ mind, you want me here or not?”

“Are you part of this crew or not?” Jet snapped his mouth shut as soon as he said it. Shit, that came out more savagely than he intended. But it had to be said.

Ghoul went silent for a long moment. The ultimatum hung heavy in the air between them.

Then Ghoul spread his hands disarmingly with a razor-sharp grin, even sharper for the mysterious x-stitched scar running up the one side, and took another few steps back. 

“Suit yourself. It’ll probably be dead in a few days anyway,” he said lightly, and retreated down the hall.

Jet just let him go. Alright, Ghoul was seriously fucked up. 

Seven days. He only had to keep this tiny human alive for seven days. 

He closed his eyes wearily, and was bombarded by a whole fresh list of worries. Dracs snakes cacti dehydration knives bombs scorpions guns heatstroke—

He quickly opened his eyes again. This was going to be a shit week. 

Sure, he could handle the basics. But beyond providing food, water, and shelter, he was going to have to keep this brat safe from…well, everything. 

Maybe even his own crew. 

  
  


~~~ 

  
  
  


Jet woke to the sound of a scream.

Dammit, Ghoul was at it again. Or Party.

Whichever of them it was, they wouldn’t want him to interfere. It was one of the unspoken rules—stay out of other people’s nightmares, or you might get a gun in your face.

Jet rolled over on the ratty blue sofa and shut his eyes when he heard the cry again.

He sat bolt upright.

It was the baby. They had a _baby._ Shit.

He fumbled for the box in the dark and scooped the wiggling kid up onto his shoulder. “Uh, there, there,” he said, voice gravelly from just waking up, and tried patting her on the back. She proceeded to scream in his ear even louder.

“Hush,” Jet said. “You’ll wake the guys, and they’re no fun when they’re sleep deprived.”

He decided at this point he should probably make the perilous journey across the room to the light switch, and stuck a foot out tentatively, trying to remember where all the piles and furniture had been earlier.

It took a while, but he got across the room without incident and even had the presence of mind to put his hand over the girl’s eyes before turning it on so she wouldn’t get blinded and become even more upset.

“What’s the trouble, huh?” he said, squinting at her. She looked and smelled fine to him. No spitup anywhere or fever flush or anything like that. Just the yelling.

Imagine being able to sleep through this racket. Jet briefly considered barging into Ghoul’s fort or Party room and holding her up to their ear and see how they liked it.

But the baby didn’t deserve that, so he bounced her gently and murmured vague shushing noises, to little avail. The tile floor was frigid under his bare feet, and he shivered.

Kobra, at least, was surely awake right now. The kid had acquired a strange habit of hanging out on the roof at night. He struck quite a tragic figure up there, the few times Jet had caught a glimpse of him—blocking out a silhouette in the starscape above with cigarette smoke billowing around his thin shadowed form as he paced silently between the solar panels like some kind of stranded vigilante. Witch only knew how he ever got enough shuteye to function. Jet suspected he took a lot of catnaps behind those mysterious sunglasses of his, but he’d rarely caught him at it.

Anyway, even though he had to be out there, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like _he_ would have any helpful advice.

“Wish you could tell me what you want, niñita,” he groaned as the baby got another lungful of air and screeched. “Hungry again? What’s going on?”

He didn’t know what time it was, but surely babies as old as her didn’t need to eat that often. Didn’t they mostly sleep through the night at this stage? He genuinely had no idea. He hoped so, but that was probably just wishful thinking.

The girl hiccupped pathetically and clutched Jet’s shirt.

“She’s probably cold.”

Jet spun on his heel toward the sound. The shadow in the kitchen doorway was so short it could only be Ghoul’s.

Jet glared at him. “What do you care?”

"Tryin’ to sleep here. I want it to shut the hell up too.” Ghoul’s face was inscrutable.

Well, he didn’t have anything better to try. Jet pulled the quilt out of her box and awkwardly managed to swaddle her in it.

He was just beginning to think it was hopeless when the baby began to calm.

Wow, shiny. He did not expect that to actually work. He turned toward the kitchen to thank Ghoul for the tip.

The doorway was empty again.

He kept rocking the baby a little, walking around aimlessly. But several minutes later she was still whimpering softly, refusing to put her head down and go back to sleep.

With other joys, at night without an adequate heat source, you huddled together for warmth. Maybe if…? No, he might smother her, or roll over and squash her in his sleep.

He was a pretty calm sleeper, though, so there was probably little risk of that. What other options did he have at this point, anyway?

He switched the light off again—maybe if it was dark that would help, too—and lay back down so she was nestled safely between him and the back of the couch with no risk of her falling off, and tucked the quilt snug around her. 

She burrowed into him and went quiet, her little ribcage under the crook of his arm rising and falling with each tiny breath, breaths that soon grew longer and slower.

Thank the Witch. Exhaustion overcoming the fear that he would accidentally crush her, Jet let his eyes close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Niñita = little girl
> 
> As I'd mentioned on tumblr recently, it had totally slipped my mind until now that as a desertborn of Puerto Rican descent Jet probably speaks at least a little Spanish, so this fic is my first shot at sprinkling some in! (If you actually speak Spanish and notice something blatantly amiss, please let me know lol.) I'll include notes at the end of chapters with translations—as close as I can figure from my research, anyways.


	3. DAY 2 - The Calm Before the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With one tiny exception, things go suspiciously well.

“Fuck,” said Party, “my life.” He threw down his stencil.

“I can arrange that,” Ghoul said, pulling out a knife with the hand that didn’t have a cigarette in it. “You in the mood for something slow and painful, or more of a flambé situation?”

“Cut the drama, Party,” Jet said, reaching over to pluck the cigarette from Ghoul’s fingers and dropping it into Ghoul’s lap. “I turned off your music because you were blasting it at full volume at _five in the morning_ with zero regard for the _sleeping infant_. Not around the baby!”

This last bit was directed at Ghoul, who leapt up with an indignant snarl and slapped at the scorchmark on his black jeans. “I’m not!”

“You’re indoors. Still counts.” Jet was a bit surprised Ghoul _was_ indoors. He’d been doing his damnedest to act like the baby didn’t exist. He’d barely even look at her from across the room where she, thankfully, was napping in her box again. 

Jet wasn’t convinced sleeping that much was normal, but little kids needed a lot of sleep, right? And at least she wasn’t crying. 

Ghoul sat back down, ignoring the wiring he was supposedly fixing in favor of idly watching Party work.

“She’s a sandpup, she’s probably used to noise. She probably likes it,” Party was grumbling. “It’s too quiet. Can’t concentrate.” He slashed another line of red onto the wall. The stream of paint sputtered halfway and stopped. 

Distracted, Jet watched the paint particles in the air float into the sunbeams filtering through the windows. It was kind of beautiful.

And stank to high heaven. He coughed and waved ineffectually at the chemical smell.

Party had started this new mural, an ambitious piece he’d apparently woken up in the middle of the night with the idea for, and he’d been half-obscured in a multicolored cloud of spraypaint all morning. “It’s going to be the whole wall,” he’d told Jet feverishly. Jet really didn’t care; he was just glad Party was going to be non-destructively occupied for a while. He couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be yet, anyway. Party had started at the top, right up against the ceiling, and was more-or-less methodically working his way down. 

His inspiration must have waned without a soundtrack, though, because he’d only got the background halfway down when he tossed away his empty can of red and began packing up with a restless frustration, slamming caps back onto their canisters, eyes already darting around the room for something else to get his hands into.

Jet coughed again, and realized belatedly that spraypaint fumes were probably just as bad as tobacco smoke. Mentally kicking himself for not making Party quit sooner, he went over to the box on the floor and peered in to make sure the kid was still breathing, or whatever.

She wasn’t there.

Jet’s glanced wildly around at the guys—was Kobra holding her? No.

Party wasn’t, either. Ghoul definitely wasn’t.

He looked back down at the empty box, stomach dropping.

“Kobra,” he said slowly, “Where’s the baby?”

“The what?” Kobra jerked out of what looked suspiciously like a doze in his corner booth. “How would I know? I never had her!”

“She was right here!” Jet brandished the box.

They all stared at him.

“Oh shit it can _crawl_ ,” Party said. 

“Did you know she could crawl!?”

“Did _you?_ ”

“No!”

“Where’d she go?”

Okay, now Jet was really starting to panic. “I don’t know, just find her!” he all but shrieked, making Kobra wince.

Party sprang into action. “If she gets into any of my stuff…”

Oh real mature, Party, be more concerned with what the baby might destroy than the fact that she could be in serious danger. 

Jet didn’t have time to argue with him. He ducked into the kitchen and scanned the floor there. Nothing. He ran back into the dining area. “Kobra, quit snuggling that coffee pot! Look!”

Kobra gulped down a hasty last sip (zone coffee, nasty stuff that Jet suspected was little more than dirt to begin with) and scrambled up.

Ghoul leaned back in his chair. “How far could it get?” he said. “It’s like, two.”

“Nix the commentary or get up and _help_ ,” Jet snapped.

Party ran down the hall; Kobra was peering under the tables, one after another. With nothing else to do, Jet looked in the kitchen again, becoming more desperate by the second.

“Bathroom?” he yelled.

“Clear,” Party yelled back.

“Kobra’s room?”

“Clear,” came Kobra’s voice faintly.

“Party’s room?” Jet yelled. (“Nope.”) He patted around in Ghoul’s blanket nest. Nothing here. “Closet?”

“It’s locked, she couldn’t have got in there.”

Jet clutched his hair. He was about to start opening the lower cabinets to see if she’d somehow crawled inside when he heard a shout.

It was Party who’d found her—outside in the yard a few paces from the open front door, pensively crunching on a handful of sand.

Party picked her up distastefully, keeping her at arm’s length. “There you are. Jet, come get Houdini and find her a taller fucking box.”

Jet stumbled to the doorway. “Thank the Witch.” Party shoved her at him, eager to be rid of her, and Jet hefted her up to his chest. “How did you get out here? Proper tumbleweed, aren’t you. And what is in your mouth?” 

The girl generously held up her handful of grime to him.

“Oh. Gross. Sweetie, no. Okay, um. Don’t eat that.” Jet tried to use his sleeve to wipe her face off with little success. “Let’s go inside, yeah?”

There was a loud clatter.

Kobra was dumping the contents of a bigger box onto the floor with no regard for where they landed, effectively undoing a good portion of yesterday’s frantic babyproofing efforts. He offered it to Jet.

“Uh, thanks. That works, I guess.” Jet lowered their pint-sized escape artist in. “New playpen, kiddo. Stay.”

“Told you the brat wouldn’t get far.” Ghoul hadn’t moved from his seat.

“Thanks for the assist,” Jet snapped. “Unfortunately for you, we’re not getting rid of her that easily.”

“Yeah, it’s my fuckin’ lucky day.” Ghoul kicked his chair away and made for the door. “Cola should’ve left it in the damn car.”

“ _Ghoul!”_

But Ghoul was gone.

Jet felt sick. Kobra’s face had gone blank, which was the most reaction you’d ever get out of him. Even Party had the humanity to look appalled, and he had a habit of saying some pretty nasty shit himself.

Ghoul didn’t mean it. He couldn’t have meant it. Surely he was just lashing out, though Jet couldn’t fathom why. Not even Ghoul could be so callous, could he?

Jet tried to shove the image of charred flesh from his mind—an image he knew all too well from cleanup after firefights—and was suddenly wildly, wildly glad that Ghoul had refused to get anywhere near her.

~~~~

To Jet’s surprise, the rest of the day passed almost normally. He kept waiting for the fallout—a meltdown from either the baby or one of the guys, a near-fatal accident, something.

And nothing catastrophic happened. 

It was an unusually quiet day. Ghoul spent the majority of it way out in the backyard somewhere, puttering around with bomb stuff Jet didn’t want to know about. He heard muffled explosions every now and then, but when he listened afterward he didn’t hear any screaming, so he went with the assumption that Ghoul was fine and had hopefully meant to set whatever-it-was off.

Kobra disappeared after a while and his bike from its usual place outside leaning against the corner of the diner did too. He must have been out practicing Witch knew what kind of breakneck stunts out in the dunes somewhere.

Party got more restless after Kobra left and flitted from project to project, leaving half-finished art strewn everywhere and running three radios all on different stations, desperate for any news or clap alerts.

The zones were quiet today too, however, and aside from a few skirmishes reported in Z-2 that they couldn’t have reached in time even if they’d wanted to, the desert was an uneventful place. Almost eerily so.

And Party couldn’t leave anyway, because Jet was messing with the Trans Am. After some thought Jet had carried the baby’s makeshift playpen outside to keep half an eye on her while he messed with the engine, which he’d noticed was starting to sputter more than usual. In the shade behind a scraggly tree a few yards away, safely out of sight of the vehicle, the girl seemed content to doze intermittently. (He was careful not to start the car, though. Not until he got her out of earshot.) Party even got restless enough to come out and “help” for a while. The ‘Am was his, after all. Once Party got bored and left again Jet had to redo everything he had touched—though Party could drive the thing better than anyone he was completely lost when it came to anything under the hood—but Jet didn’t mind the company while it lasted.

Kobra got back just as it was getting dark, coated in a comically thick layer of dust, and listened patiently as his brother chewed him out—firstly, for going alone and secondly, for going at all. He’d heard it all before (this happened every time, and never resulted in a different outcome) and once Party was done he went to go shake the dirt from his clothes and clean off his bike.

When he returned he joined Jet and Party at the baby’s makeshift bassinet, into which they were peering dubiously. She blinked back up at them.

“Sing ‘er a song, maybe she’ll fall asleep,” he said.

Party gave him a mortally offended look. “ _You_ sing her a song!”

Jet worried at his lower lip with his teeth. “You know, she hasn’t once smiled.”

“Well, she’s kind of been to Costa Rica and back, what do you expect?” said Party.

“I know, but. Is that normal?”

Party waved the issue away like a pesky fly. “She hadn’t dropped dead yet.”

“There is that,” Kobra mused.

Yeah. Jet definitely thought taking care of a baby would involve a lot less peace and quiet.

“Believe me, I’m not complaining,” he said, reaching in to tuck the quilt more snugly around her. “We should all be grateful she’s such an angel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Famous last words, Jet. Famous last words.


	4. DAY 3 - The Fab Four and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go even more wrong than Jet ever anticipated.

“Witch preserve us,” Party yelled. “Cola wasn’t kidding.”

Jet didn’t know what had set off the screeching demon-child in his arms, and he didn’t care; he wanted her to _shut up_.

He turned in a circle, trying to remember what he was doing. There was rehydrated powdered milk warming on the bunsen burner, right. She should have some variety in her diet besides power pup, he had insisted, and the only other stuff they had was too tough for her to chew. The girl let out another bloodcurdling screech. “Kobra, here, I gotta put the stuff in a thing!”

Kobra just looked at him blankly. “Loud.”

“I _know_ , dipshit, take her and get her to knock it off!”

Kobra shook his head vigorously.

For fuck’s sake. “Get the milk then, quick!” Jet yelled over another of the girl’s piercing shrieks. Good grief, she had to breath sometime, didn’t she?

Kobra muttered something that sounded suspiciously like _This crew is a fucking nightmare_ , but he made a dash for the pot on the burner.

“Party, find me something for a pacifier!” Jet hollered over the din. “Something _clean.”_

Party scrambled to obey. “Like what?” he shouted helplessly, rummaging through drawers. “A spoon? A, a, a napkin?”

“ANYTHING!”

 _Crash_. “Shit!” Kobra’s voice, higher than usual. “Shit, shit!”

Jet whirled, clutching the squirming kid to his chest. “¿Qué haces?!” he shrieked. It was an unconscious habit, blurting Spanish—one he'd been unsuccessfully trying to break ever since he’d once yelled _ponte las pilas_ instead of _look alive_ when he’d been the first to see a swarm of dracs coming their way and the rest of his crew had looked at him like he was crazy and nearly gotten dusted right there. “Kobra, what the hell!”

The bunsen burner had vanished under a landslide of supplies. Kobra had tripped headlong into a whole pile of them. He picked himself up and started flinging boxes and packages away to uncover it. The milk was everywhere except the pan now. “Ow! Ow, just — just gimme a second!”

“Switch it off! Kobra, switch it off!” Jet screamed at him. He shifted the human nuclear siren to his other hip in a futile attempt to give his left ear somewhat of a break. And ouch, that was his _hair_ she was yanking on, not shiny.

“Spoon, spoon, found one!” Party came racing over and shoved it into the girl’s screaming mouth.

She spat it out and screamed even louder, if that were possible. The utensil glanced off Party’s forehead.

“Ow! That’s it!” Party got right up in Jet’s face, though he had to stand on a crate to do it. “I don’t care what you promised Doc, we’re taking this banshee back right now!”

“Uh, guys?” Kobra said.

“We can’t take her in the car, you gonna walk?” Jet yelled back.

“It’s not like she isn’t already screaming!”

“Guys? The, the thing.” Kobra hovered at Jet’s elbow nervously.

“Maybe she’d stop if you weren’t also screaming, ever think about that?”

“Put a cactus in it!” Party stepped off the crate and booted it across the room. “I’m out! Fuck babysitting, fuck Doc and fuck you!”

“Don’t you dar—” Jet stopped midsentence. Was that smoke?

So did Party. He must have smelled it too. “Something’s burning.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you!” Kobra shrieked.

Jet scanned their surroundings. 

Oh Destroya. There was stuff on fire all over the room, blazing merrily. 

“Are you shitting me? Ghoul!” No response. That guy seriously needed hearing aids or something. “GHOUL, WHAT DID YOU DO!”

“Wasn’t me!” Ghoul yelled from the dining area, indignant. Fine, _maybe_ a fire could exist that wasn’t his fault. Wait, was Ghoul _reading a zine_ over there?

Kobra waved his hands. “I was tryin’ to clear the stuff off the burner!”

“Get off your ass!” Jet shouted at Ghoul, albeit at a loss as to what he could actually do to help at this point. (Ghoul made a big show of cupping a hand around his ear and shaking his head apologetically, and went back to his zine. Useless bastard.) “Well shit, Kobra, put it out! Where’s the—?” Jet thrust the baby into Kobra’s arms, giving him no chance to protest— “Hold this!” —and snatched the fire extinguisher from the wall.

He had no idea whether would work because it had to be about a million years old, but he yanked the pin out and pulled the lever in the direction of the biggest fire anyway.

It spat a bit of foam, gurgled, and that was it.

Hijo de puta, Jet was losing his mind. “K, what are you doing? Put her down and help m— _not there!_ ” he yelped as Kobra, panicking, made to plop the girl down on the precariously high kitchen counter. “In her _box!_ ”

The box was on the other counter; Kobra stuffed the still-wailing girl into it.

A fire alarm started going off. Then another, and another.

“Why do we even have those!” Party clutched his hair. “How do they even still have working batteries!?”

“Just put sand in the bucket, go!” Jet threw one at Party and grabbed a plastic tub for himself.

The girl’s wails had hit an even more piercing octave. Jet was pretty sure his ears were starting to bleed. And shit—Kobra, lost in middle of the chaos, was on the brink of shutdown. If Jet couldn’t get him to open his eyes and take his hands off his ears, the kid was gonna go catatonic for real or something.

“Fucking find those things and turn them off, they’re upsetting her!” He gave Kobra a shove on his way to the door to fill his bucket with sand.

It was enough to jar him out of it. Kobra glanced at his hand and scrambled obediently for the dining room, head craned at the ceiling for the deafening alarms. He ran smack into Party and his bucket of sand. The bucket went flying, and so did the sand—all over Party.

“Sorry, sorry!” Kobra stumbled past him. His sand-covered brother, too frazzled to even be properly outraged, bolted outside for more.

Okay, Jet’s ears were definitely bleeding. He dumped his tubful onto the biggest fire, sparing a glance in the direction of the screaming box. The girl was beginning to look distinctly blue in the face.

Desperate times, desperate measures. There was only one person left to turn to. 

“Ghoul! Jet pleaded. “Shut her up!”

“ _You_ shut her up!”

Okay, this was a life and death situation here and Jet was done playing nice.

He locked eyes with Ghoul across the diner. “Spoon. Mouth. _Now_.”

With an incoherent snarl Ghoul went, snagging a half-eaten can of powerpup from the counter.

Fucking finally. Now what? More sand. Jet dashed outside and scraped up another tubful.

Inside he heard the screaming cut off, briefly replaced with a “OW!” from Ghoul, and resume.

“The little devil bit me!”

Jet ran back into the kitchen. Ghoul was shaking his fingers.

Kobra came skidding in right behind Jet. “Last one, last one! Where is it?”

“Corner, there!” Party pointed.

Kobra tore the offending smoke detector out of the ceiling and stomped on it several times, not bothering to take the time to extract the batteries. It emitted one last electronic garble and fell silent.

Jet heaved his final load of sand onto a still-smoldering pile.

Then there came a soft, incredulous chuckle somewhere behind him.

Ghoul was making a few gentle mock jabs at the baby. “Quite some teeth you’ve got there. You’re a fighter, aren’t ya?” No condescending babytalk. There was genuine surprise and respect in his tone, like he was addressing a tiny adult. “Who’s the toughest baby joy in the zones, huh? You gonna kick my ass?”

She flailed back, and her yelling faltered at little with the distraction.

“Ooh, nice one! Now how about taking a bite outta this instead of outta me.” And Ghoul zoomed the spoon in.

“I’ll be damned,” Party muttered beside Jet.

The girl stopped hollering long enough to chew the bite. 

“Here comes another one. Nyoom. There you go,” Ghoul slipped another spoonful in, and scooped one up for himself. “One for me too, see? Yum.”

A shell-shocked silence settled over the room. 

Jet let his makeshift fire bucket slip out of his fingers. He could only stare as Ghoul fed the quieted girl and murmured encouraging nonsense whenever she accepted another bite.

And with a sudden and terrible sinking feeling, he realized Ghoul was doing it with such ease and familiarity that it couldn’t be by mere luck or instinct.

Ghoul caught him staring. Jet must have had a stricken expression on his face, because he scowled at him, daring him to make something of it, and Jet quickly looked away to scan the smoky kitchen.

Party, covered in sand, looked like some kind of half-morphed desert cryptid. Kobra, hair disheveled and tank top singed, was slumped back against the fridge sucking ruefully on a burnt finger. 

“Well,” said Jet, prodding at a bit of smashed smoke detector with his boot. “At least we know the diner was still up to safety code.” Sort of. 

A hysterical giggle escaped Party. That started Ghoul off, and then Jet was chuckling too. Even Kobra rolled his eyes, acknowledging the ridiculousness of the situation. And for a moment Jet forgot about trashed kitchens and fires and screaming babies, and they were just a crew again.

~~~

Party stomped another lap around the dining area, making everything in the diner rattle, including the nail Jet was trying to hold in place. He was cobbling some scraps of wood to one of the barstools, adding a back and sides and a tray-like front piece. Sort of a high chair. The theory was it would make it easier for them to feed the baby without getting more food on them than they did in her.

“Can you not?” Jet finally snapped. Party had been pacing the diner for a good two hours now like a caged animal, scanning aimlessly through radio stations. Couldn’t he channel some of that energy into, oh, cleaning up the disaster in the kitchen, maybe?

“Dammit Jet, the zones are dead,” Party groused, slamming the static-hissing boombox down on a chair.

“Mad Gear’s playing the Pit, day after tomorrow,” Ghoul reminded him. “Allegedly.”

To Party, the concept of anything farther away than tomorrow may as well have been next year. He groaned and slumped into a booth next to Kobra, who was an impassive statue behind his sunglasses.

“Wake up,” Party demanded. “Let’s track down that mythological record store everyone’s always talking about. Blow up an outpost. Go look for Destroya. Something.” He reached over to slap the side of Kobra’s head.

Kobra’s hand flashed up to smack Party’s away, lightning-fast.

“Fuckoff,” he mumbled, already settling back against the wall.

Party leapt up. “You’re no fun.”

“Damn right,” muttered Ghoul. Party pulled a face at him, grabbed the radio and stormed outside.

Finally, a little quiet. Jet started tapping in another nail.

Party was gone for all of five minutes before he came rushing in again. The radio in his hand was blaring coordinates, landmarks, warnings.

“K! There’s a whole squad sweeping Z-5, let’s go fuck their shit up!”

Kobra hesitated for just a second—if Jet had blinked, he’d have missed it—but all he said was “Fuckin’ A” and went to grab his power glove.

“What’s that many of them doing out so far?” Jet wanted to know. “Usually they don’t bother doing routine sweeps past Four.”

“Who gives a damn.” Party was already stuffing battery packs into his jacket pockets, eyes glinting behind his yellow domino mask. “You with us?”

Jet’s rebreather helmet that served as a mask, fashioned from old space suit parts he’d looted from some museum ruin years ago, was gleaming at Jet on its shelf. 

Desertborn though he was, Jet had never been one to go looking for a fight until he started running with the Venom Brothers and Ghoul. Before that, he had always been more concerned with survival. But Party’s heroic tendencies were especially infectious, and he had more than enough fight in him to spare for all of them. Combine that with Kobra’s cool, self-contained rage and throw the blistering radiation of Ghoul’s wrath into the mix, and Jet was always swept right along with them.

Did he go with them mostly to keep them from getting their reckless asses dusted? Maybe so. But it was also far too easy to become addicted to the rush; it made him feel more alive more than he cared to admit. He could feel it thundering in his pulse now, that familiar high of fearlessness, of _purpose_.

Jet set down his hammer.

“Shotgun,” he said, and Party graced him with a fierce smile.

They had gearing-up down to a science by now. Batteries were exchanged. Boots were laced tight. Helmets were jammed on.

Within minutes they were piling into the Trans Am. The engine roared to life. Party cranked the volume on the stereo and hit the gas.

Jet gripped the panic handle on the ceiling and braced a boot on the floorboard. He never tired of this—of the harsh desert wind whipping knots into his hair through the open window, of the grit in his teeth and the shitty speakers thumping, the yellow highway dashes blurring into a solid line beneath the tires. He knew he shouldn’t trust someone as reckless as Party at the wheel, but inexplicably he did. Despite not knowing shit about mechanics, Party knew every cantankerous gear and quirk of this car as if he’d built it himself.

Ghoul let out a yelp. “Stop! We left it!”

“What?” Jet said.

“Can’t believe we forgot, turn around!” Ghoul reached up from the back seat to pound at Party’s shoulder.

“Ghoul. What is it.”

“I said stop the car!”

“Ghoul! What did you forget?”

Ghoul was distraught. “My _bazooka!_ ”

“Oh fuck, go back,” Party agreed, jerking the car around into a 180 without warning. “Can’t have a hot firefight without that thing.”

They pulled back up to the diner. Ghoul scrambled out and returned in record time, hauling his favorite weapon. And off they went again.

Until Party slammed the brakes a half mile later.

“Now what?” Jet peeled himself off the inside windshield. Fine, not literally, but _ow_.

Party was gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles went white. Even behind his mask, he looked like he’d been slapped. “The kid.”

“I’m right here!” Kobra said, offended.

“The _other_ _kid_.”

A vision of the baby passed out in her box after the morning’s fiasco flashed through Jet’s head.

They forgot the baby.

Jet tore off his helmet, struck by a stomach-knotting rush of panic and guilt. “Hijo de las mil putas.” How could he forget the baby? 

Party practically threw himself out of the Trans Am, slamming the door behind him. The whole car rattled.

Jet watched him pace the asphalt for a while. What was he doing?

“Party, get in,” Jet said at last. “We’re going back.”

“Fuck. This,” said Party, breathing ragged. “We’re—I can’t—dammit, Jet!”

Jet rubbed his forehead. He was starting to wonder if Party thought _dammit_ was his first name. 

He could sympathize with the frustration that must be overwhelming Party’s adrenaline-wracked mind right now. But there was nothing they could do. Not with a child they’d clean forgotten about waiting for them back at the diner.

Party was visibly shaking with pent-up energy. He was scary like this, a fully-charged gun that could go off in any direction. Jet was anything but confident in his ability to talk him down in this state, and yet he had to try.

“We don’t have to save everyone in the zones, Party,” he said, ducking a bit trying to make eye contact with him through the rolled-down driver’s window. “Others heard the alert.”

“People could be dying!”

“There haven’t been any reported captures or ghosts yet. And just because it needs to be done doesn’t mean we have to do it.” Or could do it in the first place.

Party did not appreciate having his own words thrown back at him. He gave Jet a murderous look and slammed his hands down on the window frame. “Lick my battery.”

“This isn’t a debate, Party.”

“I know!”

“There’ll always be more dracs. Get. In.”

Party didn’t obey, too busy kicking a tire to probably even hear him. Then he raked a hand through his hair and went back to pacing.

The engine pinged as it started to cool.

“Ghoul, tell Party,” Jet muttered.

Ghoul, the little shit, was grinning and watching Party through the dusty backseat window like a boy outside a candy store. “Nah. I wanna see if he’d gonna kick that cactus next.”

Okay, not only was Ghoul half deaf, he was also entirely tone deaf. Shiny. Jet really shouldn’t be surprised at this point.

He was toying with the idea of scooting over to take the wheel himself and leaving Party by the roadside—despite the fact Jet would never seriously consider doing that to anyone, even Party, but they had a baby to get back to before she bit the dust, for crying out loud—when Party strode back to the open window.

“Only one of us has to stay with her,” he said, low.

It was a bad idea, and Jet could tell Party knew it. With only three of them, they’d be outnumbered two to one. Jet didn’t like those odds.

“It’s a whole squad,” said Jet.

“Me an’ K used to take that many all the time!”

Jet growled under his breath. Party really was impossible. 

Kobra. Kobra was being awfully quiet in the backseat. Jet craned around his headrest to shoot a pleading look at him, like, _talk to your brother_.

Kobra looked down at his lap. Turned his power glove over in his hands.

“Four days, Party,” he said.

Even then Party stood there for a long minute more, one hand clenching and unclenching into a fist.

After all this was over, he was probably going to embark on a drac-killing spree to end all killing sprees. Just to make up for lost time. Jet filed that away to worry about later.

“Four more fucking days,” Party said, and got back in the car.

All the way back to the diner, Jet’s head spun like tires in loose sand. 

What had he been thinking? They were only two days in and they’d already abandoned her and nearly burned the diner down. 

Even if they managed to not kill her, this helpless infant could easily tear his crew apart.

Ghoul had only been with them for maybe six months, and only recently stopped bolting at the slightest provocation. Kobra could do a pretty great disappearing act himself, when he wasn't holed up in his room for days on end, and even he had been up and around the majority of the time lately, taking more of an interest in biking and his tech again.

And Party...well, Party had always been Party and always would be, but Jet had to admit he had steadied, somewhat—opting to spend more time plastering graffiti on old highway billboards or antagonizing Ghoul for something to do instead of attempting foolhardy solo missions or provoking strangers into altercations wherever he went. Even the raids he organized had become cleverer, more calculated—strategized for maximum damage and scoring valuable supply hauls and intel, not merely to wreak as much havoc as possible with no regard for what they or other joys might gain from it.

And now, just when they’d finally started making it work, started actually working together and not just in the same space, navigating each other’s strengths and weaknesses and unspoken rules, bonding over their mutual love for destruction of everything BL/Ind stood for? Jet had fucked it up and it was all in danger of collapsing around him like a house of cards. The tension in the car was palpable, ranging from exasperation to downright hostility, and Jet wasn’t certain they would survive the rest of the week intact.

He’d been trying to bear the brunt of this new burden—desperate to keep their resentment at bay, desperate to protect them from her as much as he was desperate to keep the damn thing alive—but Witch help him, he was only human, and he could already feel himself redlining.

He should have realized before Doc roped him into it that this was the last thing they needed. Their newfound balance as a crew was shaky at best. One bad argument, one knock-down drag-out fight right now could set the four of them years backward in trust. At worst, it could break them apart for good.

How much longer would Ghoul keep up the disturbingly uncharacteristic nice guy act before he reverted back to his usual devil-may-care, infantophobic self? How many more screaming fits could highstrung Kobra stomach before he refused to have anything to do with her? How long would Party last tied down at the diner until he spontaneously combusted?

Sure, Jet was fiercely protective of his own, but this kid wasn’t his. She was a duty to fulfill, a nuisance to tolerate. And a dangerous liability on top of that—an outsider Jet prayed wouldn’t tear his only family apart.

If she did, he’d have no one to blame but himself.

Then again, maybe he was wrong. Maybe the worst was over, and they could keep their heads down and power through the next four days without incident and put this whole ordeal far, far behind them.

And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that the sleeping baby waiting for them back at the diner was a time bomb in a crewful of short fuses.

He just didn’t know what would strike the match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THEY'RE SO DUMB EVEN JET 
> 
> Spanish notes  
> ¿Qué haces? = What are you doing?  
> Ponte las pilas = “Put in your batteries”, a common phrase I thought was especially well suited to the dangerverse, used to mean “look alive” or “snap out of it”  
> Hijo de puta = son of a b*tch  
> Hijo de las mil putas = son of a thousand wh*res


	5. DAY 4 - Full of Surprises

“Ghoul, you can’t put her on a leash!”

“Why not? She can’t stay in that box all the time, Jet!”

“Where did you even get that?”

“Snake Boy’s room.” Ghoul was all innocence.

“Why does Sna — Kobra have a dinosaur backpack leash?” Jet asked helplessly.

“Far be it from me to discern the mind of our local reptile enthusiast, Starman.”

Party let out a longsuffering sigh. “Just let him try it.”

Party had been in high dudgeon the rest of yesterday, slamming doors at random and muttering profanity-laced tirades about infants and promises and certain pirate radio DJs until Jet had shoved a box of paints into his hands and banished him to the shed with strict instructions not to set foot in the diner again until he was in a better mood, carefully lifting Party’s keys from his pocket as he stomped past Jet to obey, just to be on the safe side. (“If you get so much as a fleck of paint on my bike shit in there, I’ll cut you,” Kobra threatened, and Party paused at the exit to snarl something unintelligible back and slammed that door, too.)

But today he seemed…resigned, perhaps, to the purgatory that was his new life for the rest of this week at least, armed with the assurance that it was going to end soon, and had helped Jet deal with the fussing and spitup and even diaper changing with mere gritted teeth. (Jet was not looking forward to _that_ load of laundry.)

“She could get tangled up, or strangled or something,” Jet fretted. “For Witch’s sake, Ghoul, she’s not a pet.”

Ghoul was trying, he had to give him that. He wasn’t one to offer verbal apologies and Jet knew better than to demand one of him, but after yesterday’s kitchen incident he had seemed to realize just how much of a dick he’d been and was doing his best to make up for it.

He’d been less skittish around her, and with Jet falling asleep on his feet today, he had heroically agreed to watch her for the afternoon on the condition that he could keep working on his projects. (He had somehow managed to wheedle his way out of laundry duty for a week, too.) 

And Jet, for whatever reason, was getting no gut warning against handing the child he was responsible for to the zones’ most lethal bombmaker. Sure, maybe Ghoul had zero self-preservation instincts or impulse control, let alone the slightest consideration for anyone else unless there was something in it for him, but he understood that Jet would personally feed him his own intestines if she got so much as a scratch while in his care.

Jet didn’t worry that she was in any danger from Ghoul anyway, despite the things he’d said. He knew by now Ghoul said all sorts of shit he didn’t mean. (It wasn’t that Ghoul was all bark and no bite, exactly. He did bite sometimes. Figuratively speaking, and occasionally literally. When he did, though, he didn’t mean anything by it. Not with crew.) And there was a clumsy sort of gentleness in the way he’d been interacting with her—almost too gentle, like she was made of spun glass and he was terrified of hurting her.

What Jet did worry about was just how thoroughly Ghoul must have had to compartmentalize whatever had been causing him to have such a visceral reaction to her in the first place that he could act so casual around her now.

What was he supposed to do about that, though? _Ask_ him? No chance in hell that would end well.

You never asked questions like that. Not to anyone. Not out here.

“What?” said Ghoul.

“I SAID, SHE COULD GET STRANGLED,” Jet repeated, and started another mental list. (One, find hearing aids somewhere. Two, find batteries for said hearing aids. Three, somehow convince Ghoul that wearing them was his own idea.)

“Oh. You _want_ her to run off again?” Ghoul said.

“No! I…just…just keep an eye on her, okay? And if you don’t put that dinosaur thing away before Kobra gets back and sees you using it without permission he’ll probably put a toad in your bed or something. Fair warning.”

“Oh, so Kobra gets to leave,” Party muttered. “I want my keys back.”

“I could hardly stop him, Party, I didn’t even see him go.” Jet rubbed his irritated eyes. Destroya, he was too tired for this. He’d been up with the baby since…shit, he had no idea when. Too long. “He needs to practice for tomorrow anyway. Witch knows we need the funds with an extra mouth to feed.”

Party subsided, grumbling under his breath about how the gambling tables or a good old-fashioned game of Devil May Dare could be much more lucrative than derbies, if you survived.

Ghoul approached the cardboard box and studied the child inside, tilting his head as if calculating the best way to get the harness on her.

“Okay. Let’s go,” Ghoul said, lifting the baby out of the box and sitting her on the table. He slipped her arm into the first strap.

“AUGH,” she went, uncertain about this strange new turn of events.

“AUGH,” Ghoul went right back. Not _at_ her. Just in solidarity.

The baby blinked.

“Augh,” she tried again, more hesitant this time.

“ _Augh_ ,” Ghoul whispered conspiratorially, and snuck her other arm into the corresponding loop.

“ _Gah._ ” The baby matched his volume, catching on to the game.

“Done. See, was that so bad? Go, explore. Be free. Sort of,” Ghoul said, snapping the last plastic buckle shut and setting her down on the floor. She immediately took off at a scampering crawl to the end of the leash.

Ghoul glared at Jet. “Hell’s wrong with you?”

He was so good with her it was uncanny. It was like he didn’t even have to try. Jet tore his eyes away, feeling ill.

Sleep. He really needed some sleep.

Since the dining room was occupied and noisy and there was so sign that was going to change anytime soon, Jet gave up on his usual spot on the couch. 

"No explosives," he reminded Ghoul, and went to Kobra’s room instead, formerly a cramped little office space that now had a bare mattress wedged into it which Kobra rarely used, and lay there staring at the ceiling, thoughts beginning to splinter again.

~~~

Jet woke on Kobra’s mattress to the light fixture flickering overhead. He must have fallen asleep after all.

Damn that generator. Maybe the wiring between it and the solar panels was coming loose again. He clambered to his feet and went to the light switch to toggle it a few times. The flickering stopped. Huh.

He could hear the baby raising a fuss in the other room. What did she want this time? Where were the guys, leaving her to shriek like that?

Wait. Those sounded like _happy_ noises.

Even more baffled now, he stumbled out of the room and down the hall. He nearly ran into Party standing frozen at the end of it, who quickly put up an arm to hold him back.

“Jet,” Party said, voice oddly tight. Look.”

Jet looked.

Across the room, the girl was wriggling in her new high chair and squealing happily, utterly entranced by Kobra, who was crouched in front of her in his dusty racing gear.

“Where’s my girlie?” he was saying, muffled behind his Good Luck visor. He flipped it up. “There she is!”

The girl beamed and chortled and wriggled even more, and a high-pitched giggle bubbled out of Kobra, too.

Holy shit, who was that?

Kobra flipped the visor down and up again. “Uh-oh, she’s gone. Where’d she go? There she is!” He let out another laugh, completely unaware he was being observed, and ducked around behind the chair. The girl twisted in her seat and craned her curly head around, trying to get a glimpse of him. He darted back into view, earning another joyful squeal in response.

For once, the kid actually looked like the teenager he was, more animated than Jet had ever seen him outside of a clap or the racetrack. He was smiling— _laughing_ , even—and the sight was so foreign that all Jet could do was stare.

Seeing Kobra so unguarded like this, so enchanted by the girl’s glee, was nearly enough to make tears prick at his eyes.

Party’s eyes were suspiciously shiny, too. He was still frozen beside Jet, as if moving or making a sound above a whisper would break the spell.

Jet had always kind of assumed Kobra lightened up when he was just with his brother—no one could be that stoic and snarky all the time, right?—but Party’s reaction to this told a different story.

He was _rattled_ , Jet realized. Genuinely rattled. 

“Where’s Ghoul?” Jet murmured. He’d had her last. 

Party hesitated. “Dunno. Brought her in a while ago for lunch once it got too hot for her to be out.”

Kobra took off his helmet and bent down over the baby. “Boo,” he said. 

She grabbed at his cheeks clumsily and he rubbed their noses together, breaking into a smile when that made her giggle again. 

Jet felt something in his chest crack. Conflicted, he suddenly wanted to swoop in and snatch the dangerously cute child away. _Kobra, don’t_. _Don’t get attached._

“I’ve nev—” Party began, and stopped. Then his mouth hardened into a firm line and he shook his head, dismissing the whole scene with a scoff. “Dork.”

He brusquely shouldered past Jet to his room. 

~~~

The baby gazed up at Jet, a picture of innocence. Her face was smudged and there was food spilled all over her front.

“What in the world did you get into?” Jet wondered aloud. “You’re filthy.”

“It’s just good clean dirt,” Party said.

“It’s really not. What she needs is a bath,” said Jet.

Ghoul’s finger flew to the side of his nose.

“Shit.” Kobra hastily followed suit.

Unfortunately for Jet, Party caught on next, leaving him the only one standing there without a finger glued to his nose.

“Oh come _on_. You’re all such sissies,” Jet said.

“House rules, Jet,” said Kobra. “Not it.”

“I know, I know.” Jet made a mental note to declare drawing straws next time, quick. Whatever method got called first prevailed. “Fine. How hard could it be?”

Fifteen minutes later, he knew the answer to that question: Pretty damn near impossible.

It wasn’t that the baby was _unhappy_ to be seated waist deep in the warm bath Jet had poured into a plastic dishpan for her, exactly. She had just decided it was the perfect opportunity to practice her future career as a breakdancer or something.

“Hold _still,_ ” Jet told her, trying to wrestle her arms out of the way, and got a faceful of dirty water for his efforts.

The row of spectators sitting on the opposite counter cheered and exchanged carbons.

Did they honestly have nothing better to do? Jet blew a soggy curl out of his eye and glared at them. “You gonna pass the soap or just sit there and watch me drown?”

“Two carbons she gets him again.”

“ _Three_ carbons he drops the soap.”

Har har. “Would you shut up?” Jet reached around them for the soap bar and lathered a clean rag.

“The match is on,” Kobra said. “Will Starman be able to defeat the zone champion bathmaster?”

The girl squealed and slapped at the water, splashing Jet again and earning a smattering of polite claps from Ghoul and Party.

“She scores. Is he down for the count? No. Starman is collecting himself for another round,” Kobra continued tonelessly. “What will he do? He’s going for the washcloth. He’s on the offensive. He’s —”

Jet threw it smack onto Kobra’s face.

Party and Ghoul howled with laughter. They clutched each other, nearly losing their balance and toppling from the counter.

Kobra peeled the rag off, unamused. “He’s a bitch,” he concluded. “Pretty sure that’s a penalty, Jet.”

“You were asking for it. I actually do need that, though,” Jet said, and Kobra flung it back.

Half an hour, a pint of elbow grease, one drenched shirt, and an approximate shitton of bad advice and commentary from the peanut gallery later, the girl was clean (well, _cleaner_ at least) and bundled up in a dishtowel Jet found in a drawer.

“Show’s over. Beat it,” Jet told his audience, and they reluctantly began to disperse. Then he noticed all the scrapes on the girl’s arms and neck. Were those from the crash? “Bother. I should clean these, they could get infected. Where’s the alcohol?”

“Ayyyyy, buena onda, eh Jet?” Kobra said appreciatively, smirking. (Jet secretly wondered occasionally if he was some kind of genius. He could parrot back things Jet had only said once before and use them perfectly, able to extract their approximate meaning just from context. It was kind of freaky.) “Get lit.”

“ _Rubbing_ alcohol, Kobra.”

“Oh. Then I dunno.”

“We’re out,” said Party.

Jet decided not to ask how he knew that. “For the last time, if you use something up, it goes on the list. _Especially_ stuff like antiseptic.”

“Oh, this list?” Party innocently waved an unreadably charred piece of paper from the fridge door.

Phoenix Witch, was today over yet? Jet pinched his brow. “Nevermind.”

Party and Kobra left, Ghoul on their heels.

Jet’s hand hovered over the cabinet where he knew Ghoul hid his liquor stash, but he heard Ghoul mutter “if you dare” on his way out, so he tried the main cabinet instead. Lucky him, there was about half a bottle of whiskey up here that no one had swiped yet. It wasn’t the best thing for disinfectant, but in a pinch it was better than nothing, he guessed.

He poured a good amount onto the corner of another dishtowel.

“Hold still, please,” he told the girl, keeping his tone super casual and bright so as not to alert her to how not fun this part was going to be. He dabbed cautiously at the biggest scratch on her shoulder.

The girl whimpered and squirmed.

“Lo siento, baby, sorry,” Jet murmured. “Don’t hate me, I know it stings. Shhh.” Dammit, she was about to start up nuclear siren act again for real. 

He pulled away quick. How the hell was he supposed to do this?

“Whoa whoawhoa, hey there, sunshine.” Ghoul’s voice, suddenly at Jet’s side. “Look.”

Jet glanced over. Ghoul held out his hands and passed one over the other, revealing his Zippo.

“Ghoul, what are you—?”

“Shh.” He flicked it open and flipped it around, the flame shooting up.

The baby stared, her mouth dropping into a little O.

“Cool, huh.” Ghoul took the flame away with his fingers and snapped them to relight it. “That’s it, sunshine, eyes on me. Go, Jet, go.”

Everyone was full of surprises today, weren’t they. Jet was too relieved to do anything but take it in stride.

He quickly resumed dabbing at the girl’s scrapes. Captivated, she barely noticed.

As Jet worked he could watch Ghoul in his peripheral, launching into an expert trick routine. He really did have a masterful control over his hands, which Jet supposed made sense what with the fluent ZSL and the terrifying number of hair-trigger bombs he must have wired over the years. 

The cap of the lighter clicked and snapped in a soothing rhythm as he made the lighter dance between his fingers. Tossed it open and shut, switched hands, threw it up and caught it again. Rotated it, rolled it over his tattooed knuckles. A second Zippo appeared and he went at it ambidextrously, a mesmerizing blur of light and metal.

After a while Jet realized he’d just been staring.

“Uh. All done here,” he said, putting the cloth aside. “That wasn’t so bad, was it, niñacita?”

Ghoul did something complicated with his hands and spread his palms to both of them, empty. “Ta-da.”

“Thanks, Ghoulie,” Jet said without thinking. The overfamiliar nickname slipped out before he could stop it.

Ghoul, already on his way out, didn’t seem to notice. “Getting rusty. Needed to practice anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spanish notes  
> Buena onda = “good wave”, frequently used as "good vibes"  
> Lo siento = “I’m sorry”


	6. DAY 5 - Words

Party was driving everyone crazy again. Well, Jet anyway. He should have known Party’s heroic resolve would be short-lived. 

“Who put a cactus in your britches?” Jet said at last, after Party’s third spat over nothing with Ghoul and fourth “accidental” spraypaint incident in Jet’s direction as he walked by Party’s mural-in-progress. He scrubbed at his now-multicolored shirt ineffectually. “Keep this shit away from the kid, okay?”

“She’s miles from here,” Party said airily, waving a paintcan in the direction of the girl. (Oh shiny, she was crawling around loose on the floor, backpack leash trailing. Who was supposed to be in charge of her this morning, anyway?) But he stopped painting and studied the baby across the room for a moment. Then he set down his can.

He went over, grabbed her by the plush dinosaur and began hauling her toward the door like a bag of groceries. “C’mon, scamp.” 

An indignant noise escaped Jet.

“Don’t _nghnt_ me, look, she loves it.” Party brandished her at him, limbs dangling. She gurgled and kicked around in the air happily, safely supported by the harness.

“Fine! Just quit waving her around like that,” Jet said hastily. “Where are you taking her?”

Party looked at him like, _Is it not obvious?_

“Out,” he said, and left.

Huh. Why on earth was Party taking such an interest in her, all of a sudden?

Jet went to the door and peered out. Wherever he’d run off to, they weren’t visible from here. All he could see was the open desert around him and a black feral cat.

“Shoo,” Jet told it. “We have one stray already.” 

Tail high, the cat meandered off as if that had been its intention all along.

Jet sighed. He wondered which way Party had gone. Should he go after him, just to make sure he was being careful with the baby?

Well, nevermind. Here was Party now, coming around the corner of the diner with the girl on his hip. 

“Don’t fuss,” he was saying. “You did fine. You’re fine.”

“What were you doing out there?” Jet demanded. 

“Thought I’d start getting her used to the car.” Party brought her inside and set her on the floor. “We’ll do some more later.” He grabbed a stack of paper napkins and a few stray crayons and crouched down next to her. “Colorin’, see? Entertain _yourself_ for once, hah?” 

“You _what?_ ” Jet said. Kids were resilient, and Jet had no doubt they could get the baby to overcome her fear with time. But a few days wasn’t going to be long enough, surely. And if they rushed her… “Party!”

“Jet!” Party mocked right back. “Relax, we didn’t get that close. She needs to learn sooner or later and I’m not torturing her, jeez. She didn’t even cry.” 

“And _crayons?_ ” Jet insisted. “Party, she’ll _eat_ them.” They were probably non-toxic, but still. 

Party ignored him, and did a quick, impatient scribble on one of the napkins to demonstrate. “Look, fun! Soooo much fun. You try.” He stuffed the crayon into the toddler’s little hand and flung himself into a booth. “Phoenix Witch! Why hasn’t Doc radioed yet?”

He really was desperate to get rid of her, wasn’t he.

“These things take time, Party, it’s only been five days,” Jet said wearily.

Party sat up then, fixing him with an accusing look. “You have my keys.”

“And?”

“You can’t keep me here. It’s my damn car, and I’ll hotwire it if I have to.” Party grabbed a can of paint again and strode over to the wall to fill in a blank patch. The mural was more than background and vague abstract shapes now, Jet noticed, though he still hadn’t made that much progress—the whole piece cut off abruptly at about waist height. And Jet still couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be, though he knew better than to scrutinize one of Party’s works too closely before it was finished unless he wanted to get clocked. 

Jet sighed. “You agreed, Party.”

“Shifts!” Party said wildly. He spun away from his mural to face Jet, forgetting to take his finger off the button and sending a spray of blue all over a pile of Kobra’s electronics. “It’s one kid, it’s not like you need all four of us to look after her. I’ll take tomorrow morning. Mad Gear’s at the Pit tonight and I am not missing it.”

Jet lifted his eyes to the ceiling. Did anyone else ever get to deal with Party’s impossible side, or was that privilege reserved just especially for Jet? Party could be a total asshole in public when he was pissed, but he was never this downright _bratty_. 

“If there’s a concert on and I can’t go? You really don’t want me here,” Party added, reasonably. Not a threat. Just a statement of fact.

He had a point. Jet sighed again.

He honestly didn’t want any of them going anywhere alone, not that he could ever stop them. He’d even tried to enforce a buddy system at one point—that was just a desert survival basic, one which all these crazy cityborns simply couldn’t seem to grasp. It had lasted all of one afternoon. “You’ll take her _all_ morning tomorrow?”

“Cross m’ heart.”

He’d better agree quick, or Party would go anyway and Jet wouldn’t get any babysitting out of him for it. He pulled the keys out of his pocket and tossed them over. “Fine, go—”

He’d barely gotten the words out before Party let out a whoop and ran off, leaving his stuff scattered all over the place. Probably to go retouch his hair.

“That means actually being _back_ by morning!” Jet yelled after him. He looked down at the girl, who had crawled over to him, sucking on a soggy crayon. Gross. “That could have gone worse. Though I’m having second thoughts already about having him keep an eye on you if he’s going to be dragging you out to the ‘Am every fifteen minutes.”

“Gblrh,” she said, and latched onto his leg.

“I know, you’re brave, you’ll be fin…”

Hold up. That wasn’t a crayon she was gnawing on, it was a pocketknife. A closed pocketknife, but still. How’d she gotten hold of a _pocketknife_ , and how had Party not noticed?

He fished it out of her mouth. “ _Party!_ ”

Definitely having second thoughts.

~~~

“You could go too, you know,” Jet told Kobra, setting the girl’s spoon down for a minute. “Me and Ghoul are holding down the fort anyway.”

Kobra looked down at the dusty helmet he was polishing. “Loud,” he said softly, so Jet didn’t press him any further.

“Fah,” the girl said, getting impatient. She was in a talkative mood tonight, babbling away nonsense that Jet had been nodding along agreeably to and interjecting an occasional “is that so” and “you don’t say.”

Party ruffled her curls as he rushed by, apparently feeling much more amiable toward her now that she wasn’t keeping him imprisoned here. He’d changed outfits about fourteen times, and had left the bathroom a cluttered mess of makeup and dye. 

At the door he grabbed his pair of boots with the highest heels and caught sight of the napkins he’d put on the floor earlier. 

He brandished one in Jet’s face. “Look! You’ve got a little artist on your hands!”

“Is that so,” Jet said automatically for the seventh time that evening, taking a polite look at it. He couldn’t see what the big deal was. It was just a scribble. 

“Don’t touch that!” Party shrieked suddenly, nearly making Jet drop the tin of beans he was holding. “You’ll scratch my records, it’s broken, remember?”

Ghoul jumped away from the jukebox he’d been idly examining. 

“Aren’t you leaving?” Jet asked Party, who’d abandoned his shoes and the napkin to run over and unplug the jukebox from the wall lest anyone else try to use it.

“FaaaAAH,” the girl repeated, more emphatically this time.

“In a minute.” Party ran back for his boots and skidded to a halt. “Hang on, she’s sayin’ something!”

Ghoul came running over, too. “Oh shit, she’s trying to say Fun!”

“She is not,” Kobra said scornfully.

“Fah!” the girl grabbed for the utensil in Jet’s hand, just out of reach.

“Is too!” Ghoul squatted down in front of the high chair next to Jet. “What’s that? Say it again,” he wheedled.

“No, say Poison!” Party elbowed Ghoul over.

“Shut up!” Ghoul shoved him back. “Fun Ghoul, babygirl, Fun Ghoul. C’mon, you know I’m your favorite.”

"Fah…"

“Poison!”

“Fun Ghoul!”

The girl looked around at the four faces staring expectantly at her.

“Fuck,” she announced, clear as day.

Ghoul and Party erupted into howls of delight.

“Sky above, where did she hear that?” Jet said, scandalized. Which, zones, yeah, but no one the girl’s age should be using that word. Ghoul was rocked back on his heels, cackling. “Ghoul!”

“Wasn’t me, I…hahahaha…I swear…”

Jet turned his wrath toward Party, much to Party’s alarm. “ _You_.”

Party’s hands shot up in defense. “What makes you think it was me? I didn’t fuckin’ do it!” he blurted.

“Aha! Get the fuck out!” Jet pointed at the door; he’d deal with him later.

“AHA!” Party shrieked triumphantly right back, just as Ghoul and Kobra both let out gleeful, derisive _ooooooh_ s.

Dammit. Jet clapped a palm over his mouth. He was never going to hear the end of this, was he.

Party took advantage of the distraction and fled, still laughing.

Jet turned back to the toddler. “Don’t look so smug, niñacita. You are in big trouble.” He shook the spoon at her.

The girl chortled, immensely pleased with the dramatic response her pronouncement had achieved, and gave Jet what could only be described as a shit-eating grin.

“Oh, beans,” said Jet. 

How were you supposed to communicate disapproval to a two-year-old, anyway? It wasn’t like she could understand timeout yet. He’d better teach her some more words, quick, and hope she forgot that one. And watch his own tongue, too—clearly he was no better than the rest of them.

Ghoul really didn’t have to keep sniggering like that, it wasn’t _that_ funny. And Kobra could definitely wipe that smirk off his face.

“What?” Jet demanded.

“Nothin’.” Kobra ducked his head and resumed polishing his helmet.

~~~

“Why are you just listening to static?” Jet said, peering over Kobra’s shoulder at the radio in his lap. “Isn’t that Cola’s channel?”

“Shut up,” Kobra said. He glanced down at his hand even though he wasn’t wearing a watch. “He’s usually on soon.”

Cola only broadcast sporadically; usually at night, which was beginning to creep over the diner now. It was part of the charm of his station, which mostly consisted of original poetry in varying degrees of weirdness, random updates on whatever cool ruins or loot he found on one of his scavenging excursions or odd jobs, or sometimes just passages from one of the writings in his vast book collection. Excerpts from diaries of long-dead people or the Graffiti Bible or what have you. Jet was pretty sure Kobra would tune in even if Cola was reading an old phonebook, but he didn’t say that.

Kobra’s prediction was spot on—the radio crackled to life moments later.

_“Greetings and salutations from Zone 5, troublemakers; just tuning in to say here’s hoping our troubles are over for the day. There are few unbroken mirrors in the zones, my friends, but tomorrow’s still halfway around the world and as the sun sets in your rearview mirror, drive on, drive on; we’re all headed toward the dawn. So stay, stay gentle, just tonight—no rage against the dying light, it’ll come easier again if we say our goodbyes…”_

“That’s Cherri,” Kobra told the girl when she perked up at the voice. “You remember him, doncha? Pulled you out of that wreck like a badass?”

“Out of the frying pan into the proverbial fucking fire,” Ghoul said cheerfully, snapping his Zippo in Kobra’s face as he walked by. Kobra didn’t so much as blink.

Jet frowned. “Wait, the car was on fire, so wouldn’t it technically be ‘out of the fire, into the frying pan’?”

“The whole damn diner nearly went up too, no thanks to Snake Boy here,” Ghoul pointed out. Kobra flipped him off.

“Okay then, so…out of the fire into the…” Jet’s brow furrowed. “Uh…the slightly smaller fire.”

“Aaah.” The baby on the floor grabbed onto the fabric of the couch and pulled herself upright, wobbling.

Kobra considered her for a moment, then moved the radio beside him and lifted her into his lap.

“Aww, give her a big goodnight smooch too,” Ghoul jeered. He’d missed the adorable peekaboo show earlier, Jet realized. This would’ve been the first he’d seen Kobra voluntarily interacting with the girl.

“Piss off.” Kobra turned the radio up some more.

Okay, he’d had it. Jet made a trip to the kitchen and returned shortly, thrusting an empty coffee can into Kobra’s face. “Carbon. In.”

Kobra blinked at him. “What fresh fuckery is this?”

“Exactly. I’m starting a swear jar. And that’s two carbons.” Jet was wondering now if he had been blaming the wrong people earlier for the girl’s, uh, unexpected declaration.

“Come oooon, Jet, that’s bull—”

“You’re on loose sand, helmet hair.”

“Fine,” Kobra snapped, fishing around in a pocket to pay up. “Zip it or I’ll zip it for you, comprende? We’re tryna _listen._ ”

Satisfied, Jet rattled the can warningly at Ghoul for good measure and went to find a sharpie to label it with. Cola’s voice trailed after him.

_“…no scarecrows roam the zones tonight, the children can come out to play. So here’s to the kids out there, and the kids of years gone by—the kids of yesterday, if you will—undying in these radiation-worn bodies still; asleep, perhaps, or locked away. Let’s drown out the dusk melancholy, shall we? With a little something you’ll remember, maybe…”_

Jet heard the faint sound of a page turning.

_“In the great green room there was a telephone and a red balloon…”_

He was reading from something. Something that sounded vaguely familiar to Jet, though he couldn’t place it.

_“…a picture of the cow jumping over the moon…”_

Was that…a bedtime story? Jet must have read it himself at some point, years and years ago. Or had it read to him.

He couldn’t recall, but for a moment he could have sworn he smelled lavender...

Fun Ghoul was raising his eyebrows at him from across the room. _Earth to Starman,_ he signed. _What’s your problem?_

Jet shook his head and threw a sign back. _Nevermind_.

_“…and there were three little bears, sitting on chairs…”_

_“Goodnight room, goodnight moon….”_

The girl curled up on Kobra’s chest yawned enormously.

Jet smiled. This was really sweet of Cola. He had to have made tonight’s selection with his foundling in mind.

He left Kobra and the baby to it.

_“Goodnight stars, good night air; goodnight noises everywhere…”_

~~~~

It was well after midnight when Jet heard an engine approaching and shutting off. How had it gotten so late? Staying up with the baby so much had royally fucked up his sleep schedule. 

He was ninety-five percent sure the sound was the Trans Am, which still had a telltale sputter to it despite his best mechanical expertise. He set aside the zine he’d gotten caught up in and went to go check, just to make sure. And botheration, who had the girl?

Cola’s broadcast was still crackling through the radio on the couch when Jet went into the dining area. He was rambling about a box and a god and some chick named Pandora now, which Jet had no idea how were supposed to tie together. His voice was soothing, though. 

Dr. D would get you through the day, but Cola was the one who’d get you through the night, if you needed it.

Jet turned it down a bit more so that if he signed off and the airwaves reverted to static it wouldn’t jar anyone awake.

On the couch, the girl was bundled up in her quilt on Kobra’s chest, fast asleep. Kobra had nodded off too, right where he’d been sitting, slid down enough for his head to rest on the back of the sofa with one arm looped protectively over her.

It was too precious for words.

But then Party snuck inside the front door, sweat-streaked and flushed and smiling with boots in hand like a rebellious teenager sneaking in after curfew—and was that glitter all over him? What the hell—and pulled up short.

“Hey,” Jet said. He was back way sooner than he’d expected.

“No, no, no,” Party whispered. He was staring at the couch. “Jet.”

What, was there a scorpion crawling up Kobra’s leg or something? Jet looked again; no, there wasn’t.

“How could you let…we gotta get her off him.” Party lowered his boots to the floor and eased closer.

What was he doing? “Don’t disturb them,” Jet hissed. “She’ll wake up and start screeching again!”

“Trust me.” Party looked genuinely freaked out, post-concert glow vanished. “Jet, when he panics he could hurt her. I’ll wake him up, but you have to take her first.”

Who, Kobra? Why would he panic? Jet stared at him, uncomprehending. “He’s asleep!”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Party pleaded.

Okay. Whatever Party was going on about, if it had anything to do with his brother, he would be the one who knew best. Jet would just have to trust him that this really was critical and risk the billionth screaming fit of the week.

“Right.” Jet sized up the situation and hesitated. Kobra’s blaster was in its holster on his thigh, easily in reach. “Party, his gun. If I startle him—”

“I know. You worry about the girl.” Party was all grim big-brother now, all business. He crept nearer. Once he was close enough and got a hand over the blaster, he gave Jet a nod. 

Jet slid his hands under the little blanket burrito on Kobra’s chest and gingerly lifted her off. Neither of them stirred. Whew.

Jet gently transferred the girl to her box. She really needed a proper bassinet or something. Add that to his ever-growing list.

With the girl safely away, Party laid his other hand firmly on Kobra’s shoulder.

Kobra’s eyes snapped open, hand flying to where his gun was covered by Party’s hand.

Party held steady. “Easy.”

Statue-still, Kobra stared at him like his brother might rip his throat out at any moment or morph into some hideous specter.

“You’re awake,” Party said. “It’s me.” 

If possible, Kobra’s pupils went even darker. He swallowed hard and shook his head a miniscule amount, unable to look away. 

Jet felt his own muscles tense instinctively, preparing to intervene if Kobra struck. He saw now why Party had been so concerned.

If Kobra decided his brother wasn’t _him_ , he wouldn’t need access to his gun to still seriously hurt Party.

“Sorry. Just what they’d say, huh.” Party said quickly, careful to make no sudden moves. “Easy. Count your fingers or something.” No specter would remind him to make a reality check.

Kobra searched his face a long moment more. Then he glanced down at hand, and after a moment he let out a shuddering breath.

Shit, so that’s why he was always doing that. The nervous habit had always baffled Jet. 

Crisis averted, Party slid his hand out from under his and let him go, giving the top of his head a rough tousle. “You’re fine,” he said, careful to sound bored, like it didn’t matter, to help put Kobra at ease. “Hush. Baby’s asleep.”

Kobra slumped forward with his elbows on his knees, dragging his hands over his face and through his mop of bleached hair.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Party.”

The poor kid really did look shaken that he’d actually fallen asleep after dark. What awful things would he have seen, if Party hadn’t woken him?

Jet was kind of glad he didn’t know. 

“You’re fine,” Party repeated, shrugging off the unspoken thanks. But he looked away from Kobra as he said it, and Jet saw a pained expression flicker over his face, oddly akin to grief.

When Party saw Jet watching it was quickly replaced with weariness, though, and he rubbed at his temple like he had a headache. (Served him right; he had probably been crushed up against the stage next to the subwoofers all night. It was a miracle he wasn’t already as deaf as Ghoul.) “I’m turnin’ in.”

“Take her?” Jet said. If not, then he would, but in all fairness it was morning already. Technically speaking.

Party nodded distractedly. “Uh. Sure, yeah, I’ll put her box next to my bed.”

Kobra reached for the box of cigarettes on the table and shrugged on his jacket to go outside. Back to the roof, Jet supposed.

“Night, Raygun Jones,” Party said. Some inside joke Jet still didn’t know the story behind.

Kobra flicked Party off without malice and stepped out into the dark.


	7. DAY 6 - Lights Out

Jet woke later than he meant to, with a nagging sense that he was supposed to be doing something. Inventory, probably.

He made a trip to the bathroom first and on his way back down the hall peeked into Party’s room to check on the baby.

A jolt went through him. The cardboard box was next to Party’s mattress, tipped over.

He raked the cluttered room with frantic eyes. Nothing.

Then he noticed the extra lump in the blanket Party was tangled in. He pulled up the corner of it.

Party looked so damned angelic when he was sleeping that it should be illegal. Pity that never carried over in his actions when he was conscious.

And sure enough, the baby was nestled into the warmth of Party’s torso. Sound asleep with her little thumb in her mouth. Aww.

She needed an even bigger box again, if she could already escape that one. Or a proper crib. Maybe he could work on building one later today.

Party shifted restlessly onto his side and with a sigh pulled the girl into him like a teddy bear.

Party Poison. One of the most storied, dangerous killjoys in the desert. _Snuggling_.

It was too much. Jet desperately wished he had a camera right now. This was blackmail material if he ever saw it.

But the only camera they had was Ghoul’s Polaroid, and Jet had no idea where that was, so he just lingered for a while longer to let the image sink into his memory before slipping out and gently closing the door behind him. 

He went to the kitchen to try to make sense of the chaos the room had become over the week. The sand and half-burnt items everywhere didn’t help matters any. 

Ghoul poked his head out of his blanket fort groggily when Jet began rummaging around. Jet tossed half a nutrient bar in his direction to keep him out of his hair for a little while.

He heard a muffled noise of surprise from the next room and grinned; Party must have woken up and noticed his unexpected companion.

Fifteen minutes later Party made his appearance, with perfect hair and a spring in his step—which Jet was pretty sure had to be the result of witchcraft on a morning after a MGATMK show—and took charge of keeping the girl fed and entertained with only minimal griping and absolutely no sign that he’d just woken to find he’d been cuddling her in his sleep like a sentimental bitch. 

Kobra eventually showed up, dragging himself out of his room to the sink for water. There were dark circles under his eyes, which wasn’t unusual in itself. He wasn’t dressed in his racing gear, though, just whatever he’d been wearing the day before, and completely ignored the coffee Jet had (very thoughtfully, thank you very much) put on the bunsen burner to brew for him.

“Don’t you have a derby today?” Jet said.

Kobra couldn't even be assed to lift a middle finger in his direction in response. He glanced between the dining area and the hall that led back to his room, must have decided the dining area was closer, and went over to curl up on the couch with his back to the room.

Jet noticed Party watching Kobra go but he didn’t say anything to him, so Jet didn’t either.

(“Where does he _go?_ ” Party had vented to Jet out of the blue once, after Kobra had been missing for three days. “Not just, _out there_ , I mean, I don’t know what the hell goes on inside that head of his, what worlds he’s building in there or if he’s spiraling and he won’t _talk_ to me and he just keeps disappearing and it’s probably just to go racing or some shit but I don’t _know_ and—” Party cut himself off and glared at Jet. “—what business is it of yours?” Jet had blinked at him, but he graciously decided not to point out that he hadn’t been the one who brought it up. Party had stormed off, and Jet had filed away what little helpful information he could glean from the rant and had a scoff with himself at Party’s fickleness, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t also a bit concerning.)

He was only vaguely aware of some of the long-term effects of BL/Ind medication withdrawal—well, that or the any possible number of underlying issues such drugs could mask—but he was no cityborn, and honestly didn’t understand how anyone could just shut down like that when nothing was wrong. Like they were perfectly content to lie there and waste their lives away.

And Jet _knew_ he didn’t understand, so he tried to stay the fuck out of it and let Party deal with him when he was like this, even though Party’s apparent method of dealing with it was to not deal with it at all.

Ghoul came up beside Jet to poke around in the things he was sorting with idle curiosity. “How we doing?”

Jet surveyed the small collection of actual food he’d sorted out of the junk. “Not great. You up for a run in a bit?”

“Can’t it wait a day?”

“Not unless you wanna split this five ways,” Jet said, tapping the last can of powerpup. At first he’d expected to have a problem getting the baby to eat the stuff—you could hardly make Kobra eat it, and Jet wasn’t particularly fond of it himself—but she seemed to love it. Guess she’d been raised on it.

A happy chortle came from the other room and Jet turned toward the sound. The kitchen’s pass-through window shutter was up, and he could glimpse Party on a chair, bouncing the baby on his knees and softly humming a little tune.

It was weird to hear him being so quiet. Party was just…loud. If he wasn’t yelling about something or at someone or both, he was blasting music or vigorously shaking spraypaint cans at all hours or hammering away at something under the hood of the Trans Am and making it run even worse.

Right now he looked almost content, with an expression on his face Jet didn’t recognize at first but decided must, impossibly, be something like fondness.

“Go see if Party will need anything?” Jet said to Ghoul, mostly just to get him to stop messing up his piles.

Ghoul went. As Jet kept sorting, he stole glances at the two of them and listened in.

“Jet says we gotta make a run today. We’re out of most everything.” Ghoul took a seat beside Party.

Party stopped bouncing the girl. “We can’t,” he said. “Not all of us.”

“Why not?”

“Still can’t get this one in the car without her screaming bloody murder.”

“Oh.” Ghoul looked grim. “I’d forgot. Nevermind.”

“Yeah. Guess it’ll be you and Jet, then.” Party glanced over at Kobra on the couch, obviously out of commission as well, and changed the subject. “I’ve been working on it with her, a little. The car thing. It’s just...slow going. I hate to upset her, and I try not to, but if I take it too far she freaks the hell out.”

(Jet didn’t want to interrupt, so he didn’t yell _jar_ this time. Party hadn’t been there for that conversation anyway. He’d have to fill him in later.)

“I got her to sit in it the other day,” Party went on, perking up a little.

“Already?” Ghoul raised an eyebrow. “That’s good, Poison. That’s really good.” He reached over to give the baby a boop on the nose. “Who’s the bravest little killjoy?”

She gurgled at him, and Party resumed bouncing her on his knees. “She was fine ‘til I decided to start the engine.”

“Oh, was that what started her off? Shit, yeah, I heard that all the way from the shed.”

“I know. It was stupid.” Party looked away. “Shoulda been more patient.”

“Poison,” Ghoul said. “You couldn’t’ve known.”

Party heaved a sigh. “I’m just afraid we’re back at square one,” he admitted. “I don’t really want to take her back out, today.”

“No worries. She’ll get there.”

“Yeah.” Party let out another breath. “Yeah, she will.”

“So.” Ghoul bumped Party’s shoulder with his own. “Market.”

“Ugh. Lemme think.” Party tipped his head. “Batteries, always batteries. And she’ll need shoes, though I dunno where you’d find any. You’re gonna be runnin’ around everywhere pretty soon, aren’t you? Yes you are!”

“Bigger clothes, too,” Ghoul said. “Look at her. She’s so chubby has to be due for a growth spurt any day now.”

“Oh, is that a thing?” said Party. “That makes sense, I guess. Kids, huh.”

He gave Ghoul a funny look, and Ghoul quickly said, “Uh, list. What else?”

“Hm.” Party returned his attention to the girl. “More powdered milk, maybe. What are two-year-olds supposed to be eating, anyhow?”

Ghoul hesitated. “Same shit as the rest of us, I guess,” he said carefully. “She seems to be doing okay.”

“Agrlbmmrgh,” the girl contributed.

“Oh yeah?” Party smiled down at her. “Can you say Poison, babygirl? Poi-son.”

“Ah _ah_ ah,” she informed him.

“Poi-son.”

“Gblugrh.”

“Pois-on. Come on, I know you can.”

The Girl looked up at him, a sudden sly gleam in her hazel eyes.

“Da,” she said.

“Nope! Nope, nope, no,” Party said hastily, looking so alarmed that Ghoul let out a cackle. “No-no, sunshine. None of that.”

“She’s messing with you,” Ghoul said. “Dunno where she picked that up, but she figured out pretty quick that it gets quite the reaction. She sprung it on me yesterday. I almost dropped her.” He laughed again, but he twisted his hands in his lap.

Party didn’t notice. “Rascal,” he told the girl, more than a little relieved. “Say Poison.”

“Da!” the girl shouted again at no one in particular, very pleased with herself, all gap-toothed baby-smile.

“Poiiisoooon.”

“Pozz’n,” she finally repeated, grabbing with a tiny fist at the hair hanging in Party’s face.

“Close enough.” Party ruffled her curls. “Good job. Oh, and some red paint, if you can swing it? I’ll owe you forever.”

“Counting on it,” Ghoul said, getting to his feet and heading for the kitchen again. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Write that shit down!” Party yelled after him. Ghoul had the memory of a sieve, and when he forgot things he always insisted he’d never been told about them in the first place.

“Wagashidow,” the baby echoed, thinking they were still playing the game.

“Sky above!” gasped Party in the voice Jet recognized all too well as Party’s terrible imitation of _him_ ; how rude. He hoisted the girl up and wrinkled his nose at her, pretending to be shocked. “Who taught you that? Who taught you that?”

“Agagalagh.”

“You wanna fight, huh, you little scrapper? Bring it on. Whoa, okay, easy there.” Party tried to hold her out of reach as she started batting away at his face, but she still got a few good slaps in. He stole a glance at Ghoul, wincing a bit. “Sure you don’t want babysitting duty instead?”

“How could I possibly deprive you? All yours.” Ghoul grinned at them from the doorway. 

“Yeah, I’m sure I can manage for one more day,” Party laughed. 

For a moment so fleeting that afterward Jet was certain he had imagined it, Ghoul’s expression went nearly as blank as Kobra’s pokerface.

Then Ghoul laughed, too. “Yeah. One more day. Thank the Witch.”

  
  


~~~

Jet’s trip to the market with Ghoul was thankfully uneventful—Ghoul actually stayed on mission for once and didn’t insult any sellers or start throwing punches at anyone who looked at him funny—but as they pulled up to the diner again Jet heard the screaming even before he turned off the engine.

“Sonofabitch. I shouldn’t have left them alone,” he growled, and threw the gearshift into park. “Come on.” 

He and Ghoul got out. Jet came around the side of the car and nearly ran smack into a frantic Party. “Whoa, hey. Where is she?”

“Inside. Jet, you’ve got to do something, I know I promised but I can’t take any more of this, I can’t.” Party’s face was haggard. He paced helplessly back and forth and wouldn’t meet Jet’s eyes.

Jet grabbed him by the shoulders to steady him. “Who’s with her, is Kobra in there?”

“Oh, he was a big help,” Party said bitterly, tearing himself out of Jet’s grip. “Hauled ass about two seconds after she started. I _just_ set her down to come out here, I swear. You gotta make her stop, it’s been _hours_. I tried everything but Jet, she, she—”

“Why, what’s wrong?” What was Jet supposed to do?

Party’s eyes glittered. “She won’t stop saying _mama_ …” He pressed a fist to his mouth and started pacing again, pacing and unconsciously dragging the fingers of his other hand up and down the outside of his thigh, a tell that only appeared when he was in genuine distress.

His nerves must be shot—not just from the noise, but from the emotional distress of trying to comfort a child in pain that you couldn’t do anything about. His hair was a mess, too, which he never let happen if he was within a half mile of a mirror, and he couldn’t stand still. 

He wasn’t just being dramatic. He was acting like he was about to lose it.

Jet wavered, torn in every direction. The perishables in the car were going to spoil if he left them in there much longer, the baby was wailing, he had no idea where Kobra was, Party was on the verge of a mental breakdown, and—he looked around for help—shiny, now Ghoul was nowhere to be seen, either. 

He’d finally bolted again, hadn’t he, dammit. Jet should have expected this all along. If he ever showed his face here again Jet was going to...

“Jet.” Party’s voice snapped him out of it. “Please.”

(Party, saying _please?_ He really was about to lose it.)

Jet sucked in a shaky breath. Baby first. Right. “Witch, Party, I’ll try, but…” What was he supposed to do for the girl that Party couldn’t? It’d been too much to hope that she wouldn’t miss her mother. It was a miracle she’d stayed distracted this long. Wouldn’t they just have to wait it out?

“Shh. The hell?” Party cocked his head, listening.

Jet paused to listen, too. He didn’t hear screaming anymore.

He and Party exchanged a look and rushed to investigate.

But they were still yards away when they both stopped in their tracks, frozen by what they glimpsed through the front door Party had left hanging open.

The sight hit Jet like a car door slamming on his fingers. So that’s where Ghoul had gone.

He was kneeling on the floor beside the girl’s box, and he’d lifted her out of her blankets and had her pressed tight to his chest, rocking forward and back. She was still whimpering, but quieter now, heartrending uneven little gasps. 

“I know, baby,” Ghoul was saying. “I know. I know.” Over and over. The light reflected weirdly off his cheeks and Jet realized with a gutwrenching jolt that Ghoul was crying too. 

Ghoul, fuck. Jet thoughtlessly stepped forward, but Party’s hand on his arm stopped him.

“Don’t,” he murmured. “Leave ‘em.”

Ghoul bent his dark head close over the girl. “I can’t bring her back, baby, I’m sorry. I can’t—” His voice cracked, and the sound was just as awful as the baby’s hiccuppy sobbing— “I can’t bring any of them back.” 

“He’s…” Jet said hoarsely. 

Party mouth was set in a hard line. “He’s got her.”

There was a lump in Jet’s throat, so he just nodded. Party was right, they shouldn’t be seeing this. There wasn’t anything they could do. For either of them. 

The two of them beat a hasty retreat back to the car. Jet rested his elbows on the roof and pinched his brow. Trying to picture anything but desert-hardened Ghoul clutching the girl like she was the only thing keeping him from breaking apart, so he could focus on what needed to be done now.

Regroup. Focus. Focus, Jet. 

“Where’s your brother?” he said after a minute.

Party did his thing where he raked through his hair to hide his face with his arm for a moment, and he came out the other side of it looking a little more like the Party Poison who Jet recognized. “Room, I think. You know how he gets.” He shrugged callously. “He’s fine.”

And that was Party’s lying face, but whatever. When it came to Kobra, Jet trusted Party to do something if there was anything to be done.

“Uh, here. Help me with this stuff.” Jet started pulling things out of the back seat of the ‘Am.

“A rubber duck?” Party reached around him to fish it out of the pile, dubiously holding it up between two fingers. “This better’ve been cheap.” 

“It was, get off my ass! Children’s toys are hardly in high demand out here.” 

“Still.” 

“A kid should have a rubber duck, Party,” Jet told him loftily.

Party set it aside. “Whatever you say.”

It was hard to tell what he was thinking. Party usually wore his heart on his sleeve and Jet could read him pretty well, but he had been weirdly impassive of late whenever they were discussing the girl. He’d seem to have warmed up to her one minute, like earlier this morning, only to shrug off her entire existence the next. Jet couldn’t figure him out.

He was probably being polite and trying to mask his annoyance with her for Jet’s sake. Which was actually quite mature of him. 

“Oh! Ghoul found this, too.” Regardless of what Party thought of the baby, he would think this was cool. Jet pulled out his and Ghoul’s best find, a plastic armored with robot moveable limbs and a bright paint job.

Party reached for it involuntarily. “Whoa. Pretty rad.” He turned it over in his hands. “Almost as big as she is, though.” 

“Eh, she’ll grow into it,” Jet said. “Think she’ll like it?” 

“I think she’ll love it.” Party handed it back. “Something to remember us by, huh?” 

Remember them?

Tomorrow. Day seven. Their last day.

She was leaving tomorrow.

“Right,” Jet said, quickly turning to get more stuff out of the car and ignoring the mysterious ache that flared in his ribcage. “Right. Exactly.”

  
  


~~~

  
  


Night fell like a sand dune collapsing. Gradually at first, then all at once. 

Jet found himself by the window staring aimlessly out into the dark.

Though he didn’t mind quiet, usually, he wasn’t fond of this sort. Not that he could have explained why. 

“I should radio Doc,” he said, breaking the silence. He was kind of surprised they hadn’t heard from him. He wondered with some unease if Dr. D had forgotten about the girl and their bargain entirely. 

He also wondered—just for a second—if that would be such a bad thing. 

“He hasn’t been in touch with you?” Ghoul said. 

He was stripping wires with a methodical savageness. Party was in the booth across from him, drawing absently on his own arm with a sharpie. 

Despite how much the two fought, they tended to drift together when one of them was upset. It was kind of heartwarming. 

By the time Jet and Party had dared to venture back inside that afternoon, the girl was passed out in her box, exhausted, and Ghoul’d been briskly tidying the room, which was unheard of. Jet and Party left him alone and started bringing their haul in, and after a while Ghoul had rejoined them to help. 

And if his face was still a bit haggard and his eyes were noticeably red, no one mentioned it. 

“No, not yet.” Now where had he left his transmitter? Jet started scouring piles for it.

He didn’t even hear the first blaster shot. Just the far window shattering when it hit.

“Look alive!” Party shouted.

Dracs were pouring in the entrances.

Jet lunged past him, scooping the girl up box and all into the nearest corner, clawing for his gun. He yanked it up and spun on his heel.

Kobra came stumbling out of his room, blaster in hand. Party fumbled with his own gun.

Jet didn’t know where to look, where to shoot.

And then it didn’t matter, because he was staring down the muzzle of a white blaster, inches from his right eye. Another at his ribs, a third at his throat. Three distorted white masks sneering at him. 

Jet barely dared breathe.

He couldn’t assume their guns weren’t set to kill. And even taking a stun at such short range could be deadly if it hit something vital. 

“Nobody shoot,” he said. In the corner of his eye he could see Ghoul, who was facing off a fourth drac; it’s blaster at Ghoul’s chest, Ghoul’s blaster at its neck. “Ghoul. _Don’t_. _Shoot._ ”

Ghoul was panting with barely suppressed bloodlust. But his gaze flickered over to the three dracs on Jet, and he clenched his jaw and obeyed.

Kobra had a fifth drac’s gun pressed to his temple. His own weapon was trained on the drac across the room whose gun was aimed at Party’s heart.

Party had his blaster aimed at Kobra’s drac, finger trembling on the trigger.

 _Steady, Party_ , Jet thought forcefully. A single wrong move now and none of them were getting out of this alive.

Four killjoys. Six dracs. One child.

No one fired.

Jet’s mind raced. He knew dracs were slower and clumsier than people, but not much. Not enough for him to get three shots off before taking at least one himself.

All of a sudden he felt eerily calm.

He was glad it was like this, he thought absently. Glad it’d been him who had been closest to their girl, gotten her safe behind him. He was the biggest—a perfect human shield. 

“Dead or alive,” he said. His voice sounded strange in his own ears. He’d never heard a drac talk, but they had to be able to understand speech, right? “Your orders. Alive preferred, right?” Obviously, or they’d already be ghosted.

Their baby was wide awake now. He could hear her sobbing quietly behind him.

His three dracs shifted their stances uneasily, thrown a little by the question. Like their programming was still calculating the odds of the standoff they were in.

Jet stepped forward, gun leveled at his middle drac. “If you want her, it’ll have to be d—”

The lights went out, plunging the diner into darkness.

Jet dropped to one knee. Fired blindly, unthinking. Onetwothree. 

The stench of melted rubber told him at least one shot had met its mark. Who had killed the lights? No one was near a switch. “Hold your fire, just get down! Get down!” 

He heard bodies hitting the floor. No way to tell if they were friend or foe. 

More blasts rang out, not his. The room strobed like a nightmarish disco. He braced himself for the familiar numb burn of a laser to hit. 

A stray blast did hit the wall behind him, showering sparks. Jet fired again in the direction it came. “Over here, you bastards!”

He didn’t dare make another shot in the dark. But he could still provide a sufficient shield for the girl even if he drew the dracs’ fire to distract them from the others—

He jerked his gun upward and fired at the ceiling. The flash illuminated the room for a fraction of a second. Just long enough for him to pinpoint the two white suits still standing before the dark swallowed them again.

Aim, fire. Aim, fire.

Then, silence. 

Silence except for harsh breathing and the girl’s thin crying behind him. And a distinctly Kobra-sounding clatter somewhere to his left. No more lasers split the darkness. 

There was a rasp, the sound of one of Ghoul’s homemade flares striking. Its wavering red light lit up Ghoul’s face from beneath, ghostly and tense. “Guys?”

“Here.” Party’s voice. “K?”

In the flickering red Jet saw Kobra was sprawled on the floor and his heart stopped for a fraction of a second, but Kobra was just wrestling his foot out of a basket he’d stepped in. “Uh, over here.”

“I’m good.” Jet tossed his gun aside and dropped to his knees, feeling for his kid and gathering her up. “Hush, hush now, you’re safe.”

Just as abruptly as they had winked out, the lights overhead flickered and came back on. 

Bright, ow. Jet blinked rapidly. And, okay, maybe not just because of the lights.

It was only then that the fear really hit. He thought he might be sick but that would’ve been a really bad idea with the girl in his arms, so he just swallowed hard and tried not to think about how close they’d been to losing her. On his watch.

His mind was racing furiously, trying to catch up now that the danger was over. Where had the dracs come from? Had they just stumbled onto the place and seen the lights, or had BL/Ind found out about their hideaway? How had the generator failed at precisely the moment they needed an advantage?

The girl let out a squeak of protest. Jet realized he had her crushed against himself too tight to be comfortable and forced himself to ease his hold a little.

Then Party was practically on top of Jet, seizing the girl, hugging her close. Stunned, Jet let him take her. Possessive, much?

“Shit, shit, shit.” Party sank to the floor. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

Ghoul ground out his flare and came running, skidding into Party on his knees on the tile in his haste to reach them. Practically kneeling between Party’s legs, cradling the girl’s face, pressing his forehead to hers. “Phoenix Witch. Thank fuck.”

Jeez, Jet knew they were worried about Doc stringing them up by their own guts if anything happened to her, but what was their deal?

“She’s okay, Ghoulie,” Party said shakily, like he was still trying to convince himself. “We’ll never let them hurt you, babygirl, I promise.”

Kobra tossed the offending basket away and wormed into their heap. Party clutched the back of his neck and dragged him in close.

Finding himself on the outskirts of the group, Jet took the opportunity to examine his own limbs. He couldn’t quite believe he hadn’t been hit. But after a careful inspection, all he found was a hole in his sleeve. Lucky. 

The guys were _still_ tangled up together.

Okay, they were kind of scaring him. Group hugs were not a thing in this crew. Like, if Party was feeling hella touchy-feely after a clap, he _might_ briefly sling one arm around his brother. If he thought no one was watching. And play it off afterwards by punching him or something.

They looked completely ridiculous. But it also looked…nice.

“ _I’m_ fine, thanks,” Jet said.

The three of them looked up from their huddle.

“Jet Star,” Party said. “Damn.” He was looking at Jet the same way he’d looked at Show Pony that one time Pony had given an high-level exterminator the finger, backflipped off her patrol car, and lobbed a glitter bomb in her open window.

“Remind me not to piss you off, like, ever,” said Ghoul, with an unsteady laugh.

“When are you ever _not_ pissing Jet off?” Kobra wanted to know.

“Can it, guys, you’ve seen me shoot before,” said Jet, still too shaken to be flattered.

“Not like that,” said Party. High praise, coming from him.

Ghoul nodded at Jet’s hair. “Couple inches over and you’d be out an eye.”

Jet reached up and felt a shorter chunk with scorched ends. Carajo. That didn’t bear thinking about. Thank goodness the lights had shorted out.

Freaky coincidence.

He scowled up at the nearest lightbulb. “I really need to take a look at the generator, huh,” he said.

“Witch’s luck,” was Party’s verdict. He freed a hand long enough to blow a grateful kiss skyward.

“Something,” Jet said. Then Kobra was reaching up to tug on his sleeve and, oh why the hell not, Jet allowed himself to be pulled into the haphazard embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spanish notes  
> Carajo=pretty much interchangeable with f*ck or d*amn
> 
> Literally I was trying to plot this standoff with my sister because I'd written myself into a corner and then one of us just blurted out, what if the lights went out and I was like....ooh. 
> 
> Because maybe Jet is clueless, but we all Be Knowin, don't we.


	8. DAY 7 - Goodbyes...and hellos

“We have to go.” Ghoul came back inside smelling of gasoline, wiping his hands on his jacket. He grabbed a bag and started shoving things into it, itching to take off then and there.

“It was just them,” Jet said. He glanced down at the girl in his arms, who was awake but unnervingly quiet again, much like she’d been the first few days after the crash. Last night after radioing Dr. D, he’d pried Party off her—Party had been too agitated himself to calm her down—and Jet hadn’t dared to let go of her since. “Just those six. Our location’s still secure.”

“We have to go _now!_ " Ghoul insisted. "It’s not safe!”

“Ghoul. You know it’s too risky to try and move her when she’s awake, she’ll scream.”

Ghoul slammed his bag down. “Let her scream. Better screaming than dead.”

“Ghoul,” Jet repeated. “We’re as safe here as we ever have been. And Doc said Cola’s on his way.”

Ghoul didn’t look convinced. But he stopped packing.

“Feels wrong.” Party was standing in front of the shattered window despite the early dawn cold. Broken glass crunched under his boots as he shifted his weight, on edge, unable to stand still. Between watching the black smoke curl up from the pile of bodies outside he kept stealing glances at the baby on Jet’s hip, like he had to keep making sure she was really there, really safe. “They couldn’t have wandered out this far on chance. It was almost like…”

He didn't have to finish. _It was almost like they were here for her_. 

Jet had been ignoring that same nagging dread himself. He would hate to leave the diner for good. He’d put weeks of work into the place over the years making it actually livable, but that wasn’t the only reason.

The diner was their haven, distant enough from the city that few hostiles made it this far out. BL/Ind operatives had only stumbled upon it twice before in his memory, and those had been wounded stragglers wandering aimlessly, still spurred on by their programming to look for something to exterminate.

A full squad breaking in could hardly be an accident, could it?

Kobra was a pile of limbs on the couch, one knee drawn up to his chest. Still kind of spaced out, maybe, though not nearly as vacant as earlier the previous day, the clap apparently having jolted him out of the worst of whatever void in his head he’d been sucked into. For now, at least.

“That’s bullshit,” he said. “Fucksake, Party, she’s two.” But he rubbed at the back of his neck uneasily.

“Kobra’s right,” Jet said. “What could the Batts want with a kid?”

None of them answered him.

~~~~

“Hawaiian Punch just rolled up,” Party announced, distracted from his mural by movement outside the window. “Doc, too.”

“Dr. D? What’s he doing here?” said Jet. No wonder his station had been playing _Friday_ on loop for the past half hour; Show Pony must have gotten hold of the switchboard. “Oh, bother, the doorstep. Why doesn’t this place have a ramp? Guys, go help him in.”

There was general chaos for a few minutes while Cherri Cola and a couple of them wrestled Dr. D’s chair inside.

“Easy, boys, thanks, I’ve got it from here. Jet Star, the man with a plan! ¿Cómo estás?”

“Eh, un poco cansado, Doc," Jet said, which was definitely an understatement. "You really leave the mic just to pay us a visit?”

Dr. D chuckled. “You think I was gonna pass up the chance to see how you guys were getting on with her?” He surveyed the diner with open amusement. “Looks like you had your hands full.”

“That was the clap,” Jet said quickly. Granted, the place had been trashed long before the firefight. Doc didn’t need to know that.

“Jet’ll tell you he was a badass, but truth is we lucked out and got the whole honors class of Bad Guy Academy,” Kobra said, straightfaced.

Jet shot him a dirty look. What was he talking about? “Thanks. On the other hand Ghoul will probably try to tell you there were about 30 of them.”

“Only 26!” Ghoul protested. “It was intense, Doc. There we were, facing off like in one of Poison’s terrible western films—”

“Hey,” said Party.

“—and no one was moving. it was like fuckin’ Madam Tussaud’s in here—ten of ‘em on me and like, 16 on Jet and another dozen on Party and Kobra—”

“—that’s 38, Ghoul—”

“—and then Jet’s shooting, bambambam! Kobra’s pulling a rattler out of his pocket and throwing it in one’s face—”

“—pretty sure that’s Raiders, Ghoul—”

“—Oh, right. Anyway, Party’s dropping ‘em like flies; I’m stabbing away with my…"

No one was buying it.

Ghoul laughed and gave it up. “For real though, Jet took them all down. In the fuckin’ dark, too. Snake Boy here didn’t even get the chance to go all Karate Kid on ‘em.”

“I’m sure,” said Dr. D.

“He did!” Usually never quick to share the glory, this time Party jumped in to back Ghoul up. Kobra nodded. 

“That so?” Dr. D swiveled to appraise Jet.

Thanks a lot guys, the spotlight, his favorite. Jet shrugged uncomfortably. “When they put it like that it sounds a lot shinier than it was.”

Something squeaked.

Cola lifted his foot off the rubber duck he’d stepped on and picked it up wonderingly. His eyes flickered from the toy to the cobbled-together high chair to Jet.

“How is she? She seems…good,” Cola said, coming over to get a better look at her. He sounded a little surprised, which was a little offensive but maybe not entirely undeserved considering where they’d started the week, so Jet let it slide.

“She _is_ good,” he said, bouncing her proudly. “Started using full sentences, even.”

“Really? Great! What’d she say?”

“Nothing a kid her age should be saying.” Jet grinned.

Cola laughed. “Why am I not surprised. Hi, munchkin. Learning lots of new words from these fellows, I bet. Have fun this week?”

“Ah,” the girl said, and stuffed her thumb in her mouth.

“Glad to hear it,” said Cola solemnly. He looked up at Jet. “Seriously, thanks. You guys are saints.”

Jet scoffed. “I wouldn’t go that far. She’s a good kid.”

“When she’s not breaking the sound barrier,” Kobra muttered. He met Cola’s eyes and made a little airplane-explodey gesture. “Eeeeeee. Boom.”

“Right? When World War IV hits, you can use her for an air raid siren.” Cola laughed again, but it rang empty in the quiet.

The air was weirdly heavy again. Jet had expected there to be outright glee or at least relief radiating from the other guys at the prospect of finally being free from the tiny, demanding human that had hijacked their lives this week. He guessed the clap still had them all too tense.

“’Preciate you lookin’ after her for a spell. Couldn’t have been easy.” Dr. D shoved his bandana back from his forehead. “Bad news is, I’ve been combing the channels and haven’t caught wind of any folks willing to take her in.”

“No one? No family, no friends of her mother’s?” Party pressed, a bit desperately.

Dr. D shook his head. “Cola didn’t have any luck either.”

“Asked around, a bit, when I was passing through a few settlements.” Cola shrugged. “Tough sell, kid her age. Kid any age.”

Jet bit his lip. “What does that mean for her, then?”

“Gertie’s place has a bed free,” Dr. D said. “If we can get her there.”

Zone Two. Right. “She’s making good progress on the car thing, but I don’t think she’d do well if we tried it so soon,” Jet said.

“And I said I’d take her off your hands, so.” Dr. D took off his spectacles to polish them on his sleeve. “It’s not ideal, I admit, but if we can get her to sleep we’ll see if we can get her back to the station in one piece. We’ll keep practicing with her there until she can make the trip.”

Jet looked down at the girl on his hip. It seemed cruel to shuttle the little one from place to place, from familiar faces to a whole new strange cast of caregivers.

She’d be better off in the long run though. He had to remember that. 

“We could wait a few more days,” Jet said slowly. “Keep working on it here. It’d be a lot easier on her.”

“No!” Party went all snarly again.

“It’s just an idea, Party.”

“You promised! Doc promised!”

“I know. But think about it. She—"

“She needs a home,” Ghoul interjected. He was ripping a paper napkin into little shreds in his lap under the table he was sitting at. “The sooner we get her there the better off she’ll be.”

Ghoul wasn’t wrong, for once. They shouldn’t let her get any more attached to them. 

_Or vice versa_ , a tiny voice in the back of Jet’s mind whispered. He ignored it and looked around at the roomful of faces.

Ghoul, grim. Party, bored now that his precious independence was no longer in peril. Kobra, neutral; big surprise. Cola, concerned. Doc, businesslike. No dissent. Not that he should have expected any. 

“Okay,” Jet said. “Today it is. She’s due for a nap anyway, so keep quiet.”

Dr. D maneuvered himself to the doorway and lit up a cigar to wait. Cola wandered around idly examining the heavily graffitied walls.

He paused with a frown at the red scrawl proclaiming “jet suckz”, amended by “ass” at the end in a different green handwriting which then had been crossed out by a third yellow style that also covered the other “s” with an “f”, beneath all of which “ur mom” had been added by the second handwriting again. 

Jet had long ago stopped caring about the free-for-all insult-themed décor. At least other surfaces throughout the diner had equally unflattering messages targeting the rest of the crew. Jet himself had managed to abstain from contributing. So far.

Party came up beside Cola, who jumped. “It’s not done yet,” he said, voice low so as to not disturb the girl. “Like it?”

“Uh,” said Cola, before he realizing Party was referring to the piece on the _far_ wall. “Oh. Oh, wow.”

Cola took a few steps closer. 

Jet didn’t blame him for being awestruck. Just this morning Jet had watched the mural’s subject pop out of the background under Party’s skilled hands in a few swift strokes. 

The massive robot stared out at the room from a blaze of colors, electricity rippling around it. So large that the space between the ceiling and a little over halfway down the wall (which was as far down as Party had gone) only fit his head and armored shoulders. 

Despite how impressive it was, there was something _off_ about it, it seemed to Jet. But he was no artist, and he couldn’t put his finger on what. 

“That’s… that’s Destroya. It’s incredible,” Cola said, and Party radiated smugness at the praise before remembering to look cool and uninterested. “Looks like he stepped right out of the Graffiti Bible.”

“The what now?” Party said absently, cocking his head and frowning at the painting, dissatisfied. He snatched up a can of orange as if to add a few streaks, but checked himself just before he shook it up. “What it really needs is some red here, but I ran out and Ghoul forgot to get me more.”

 _Did not. It’s with the rest of the stuff in the kitchen_ , Ghoul signed bitchily.

Party glared at him. “What?”

Ghoul pointed, like _duh_ , and Party said “Oh. Thanks” and went to retrieve it.

The girl snuggled into Jet’s shoulder. Jet turned so she’d be out of the bright sun streaming through the broken window and shifted her to a hopefully more comfortable position. Just a few more minutes now. He was starting to recognize the signs, how her breathing slowed and she seemed to get heavier as she relaxed. 

_Crash_. Jet whirled—another window, more dracs? Shit, shit—

But it was just Ghoul, who’d walked straight into Party’s tray of spraypaints that’d been hanging halfway off a table and were now rolling around noisily all over the floor.

“Shhh!” Party hissed.

Ghoul raised his palms in the universal gesture for _my fucking bad_ and started picking them up.

Klutz. The girl was was going to be awake for ages now.

When Jet looked down at her, her eyes were wide open. He put his hand on the back of her head soothingly and tried to get her to lay it back down on his shoulder. 

It struck him this was the last time he’d get to hold her, and suddenly he didn’t mind at all that this was going to take longer than he thought.

Cola wandered over to Kobra, content to plunk down beside him on the couch in companionable silence.

“She liked your story,” Kobra said softly, after a minute.

“Yeah?” Cola brightened. “You _did_ hear it, then.”

“I tune in. Sometimes. Thought she might enjoy it. Knocked her right out.” It was the most Jet had ever heard Kobra say at one time to anyone who wasn’t his brother or Ghoul or Jet. 

“I’ll do another kid’s book for her sometime.” Cola bumped Kobra’s knee with his in a friendly manner. (Kobra automatically stiffened, but it was just a reflex and he quickly relaxed again.) “Didn’t see Good Luck at the races yesterday. Bike still not running smooth?”

Kobra hesitated, just barely. “Busy.”

Something about Cola’s face told Jet he suspected Kobra of being a lying bastard, but all Cola did was shrug. “I can imagine. And, hey. Let someone else win for once, right?”

Kobra shrugged back.

“Think she’s out,” Dr. D observed.

“Finally,” Party spat, shooting Ghoul an accusatory look.

Jet glanced down. His pint-sized mischiefmaker had nodded off, drooling down his collar.

Much like Party, she looked impossibly cherubic when she was sleeping, with her corkscrew curls and that smattering of freckles across her little brown nose. Her cuts were starting to heal up too, which was good to see.

Cola stood up. “I’ll take her, I guess. The seats in the back are so big she’d rattle around like a bean in a tin can.”

Jeez, couldn’t he give them a minute? Jet resisted the impulse to yank her away from him. 

He looked back down at the girl, so defenseless and blissfully unaware. He wondered if he’d ever see her again. Catch a glimpse of her playing with other kids when he was driving through a neutral town somewhere. Surely they could stop by Gertie’s sometime, say hello…

No, that was stupid. Jet mentally shook himself. They’d all be better off with a clean break.

Party started tapping his foot. “C’mon, Jet, pasta la veesta or whatever and get a move on.”

Jet sighed.

This was for the best. It was.

Cola held out his arms and Jet tried to pass the baby over, only to realize that her one of her tiny hands was clenched tight around his finger. Shiny.

“Careful,” Cola breathed. “You don’t want to start over.”

What Jet wanted—inexplicably—was to punch the guy in the face. But he held his breath until he’d worked his finger free and gotten the girl’s dead weight shifted over to Cola’s shoulder.

“Buen viaje, corazoncita,” Jet murmured, smoothing a hand over her curls. Now who was being a sentimental bitch. He cleared his throat and stepped away.

“Anything of hers that needs to come with us?” Cola asked.

“Will her chair fit in the van?” Jet said. “Makes it a helluva lot easier to get her fed, believe me.”

“Hm. Think so,” Cola said.

“Guys, grab her shit.” Jet motioned vaguely at the room. “Pack it up, quick.”

They ended up making several trips in and out. Ghoul managed to wedge the high chair into the back. They had a surprising amount of stuff to pile into her old box, too—her blankets, her toys, her favorite spoon.

“Damn, boys, we don’t need the kitchen sink,” Dr. D said with a wheezing chuckle. 

Ghoul snapped his fingers. “Her dishtub! Thanks, Doc.” He ran to go get that, too.

“I said _not_ the kitchen sink.”

“Where are those headphones she had?” Cola asked Jet.

“The what? Oh, they’re around here somewhere,” Jet said.

While Cola waited, Jet rummaged around for a bit, to no avail.

“Hurry, or she’ll wake up again before they get a chance to leave!” Party said, starting to get frustrated.

“Can’t she go without?” said Ghoul.

“Too risky. It was the only thing that kept her asleep long enough to get her here at all. Kobra! You had them last,” Jet said. “Where’d you leave them?”

Kobra blinked at him and made a vague _I dunno_ noise.

Party muttered a curse. “Well, they have to be around here somewhere, move it!”

At the urgency in his tone they scattered to search the rest of the diner, racing against valuable sleeping time. They should have thought to do this earlier.

“Found ‘em,” Party said, coming in the back door several minutes later with a glare for Kobra. “They were in the shed.”

“Oh yeah. It was loud in there,” Kobra said sheepishly.

“Fuck’s sake,” Party said. “I’d swear you guys don’t want the little monster to leave.” He tossed the headphones to Jet.

Jet eased them carefully over the girl’s head. And then there was nothing else left to do.

Cola went outside with the baby, and Kobra, Ghoul and Jet helped Dr. D get his chair out the door.

Jet trailed out after the others to the van, babbling last-minute instructions like a moron. “She gets real impossible at bathtime but she loves powerpup; I didn’t get a chance to try it but maybe if you tried to give her a bath and feed her at the same time she wouldn’t raise a ruckus, I don’t know? She can’t walk yet but watch out because she can crawl like a little speed demon. Oh, and if she gets too hungry she _will_ bite you, so be caref—”

“I think we’ve got it, Jet.” Dr. D interrupted, not unkindly.

“Right.” Jet shut up.

The three of them were standing there, a row of desolate idiots.

Where was Party? 

“Hang on.” Jet ducked back inside.

Party was lost in his mural again already. Staring up at the wall with a paint can in each hand.

“Party?” Jet ventured. “They’re leaving.”

Party shrugged elegantly and started adding streaks of highlight to Destroya’s helmet, in full artistic genius mode once more. There was a somewhere-else-ness in his face, like he was seeing things that didn’t exist yet. Fantastical otherworldly things that would drive him mad unless he brought them to life.

Whatever. Screw him. “What are you doing?” Jet demanded. 

“You blind? What’s it look like?”

“You’ve been working on that thing all morning!”

“So?”

“So can’t you give it a rest? Is it really so godsdamned important?”

“What else d’you want me to do, wave bye-bye to a sleeping sandpup who won’t see me doing it?” Party sneered. “That’s sappy even for you, Jet. Run along now and get your closure, I’m not stoppin’ you.” 

Damn him, he knew exactly how to push Jet’s buttons. “You can’t even spare five minutes to help us send them off? It’s not like you’re going to finish anytime soon, you haven’t even _started_ half of...” 

Jet trailed off.

“Party,” he said slowly, “Why’d you stop, there?”

Thrown by Jet’s abrupt change in tone, Party looked at the wall as if half expecting to see a completely different painting then the one he’d turned his back on a few seconds ago. “What?”

“You cut it off,” Jet said. “It was going to be all of it.” 

The _whole_ wall, Party had said. 

But it wasn’t. All the way across, he’d touched nothing below knee level. The lower portion of the wall was just as bare as when he’d started. Not even the background work extended that far, and he’d moved on to the next layers two days ago. 

That’s what had looked so weird about it to Jet this whole time. It wasn’t like Party, being sloppy like that. Not with art. Not with a concept of this magnitude. 

Party stared at it for a moment, like he’d just noticed it himself. Then he scoffed. “I dunno.”

“It’s just weird, that’s all. Why—”

“I said, I don’t. Know.” Party glared, apprehensive at Jet’s sudden uncharacteristic interest in his work, or maybe a little disturbed that he’d missed such a large swathe and hadn’t noticed until now. “Does it matter? Look, I’ll go over it if it bothers you so damn much.” 

He slammed down his cans and snatched up the blue one he’d used as the base color and started shaking it. 

“Then why not just do it all at once in the first place!” Jet said, irrationally starting to get frustrated. There had to be a reason. Party always had a reason, even if he didn’t realize it himself. Shiny, he was picking a fight, wasn’t he. But he couldn’t make himself stop. 

“I don’t know!”

“Why leave it blank at _all?_ ” 

“I don’t _know!_ ” Party nearly screamed. “What do you want me to say? Because it’s too much of a pain in the ass to reach, constantly crouching and kneeling and shit? Because only a fuckin’ kid could get to it comfortably? Because she’ll be wanting to do her own in no time and she’ll need a spa—”

Party stopped, eyes glazing over as he mentally replayed the words he’d just heard come out of his own mouth. 

He’d been spouting gibberish; he might as well have been speaking in tongues, and he looked just as lost as Jet felt. 

Party set down the paint. 

“Shit,” Party said softly. He swayed slightly, like he might lose his balance, and took a heavy step backward, groping behind him to clutch at the edge of a table to steady himself. “Jet, shit.” 

Uncomprehending, Jet watched him reel, half waiting for him to finish. Maybe whatever Party was trying to say would somehow make sense by the time he finished saying it. 

But Party didn’t finish. Just stared at the blank section of wall. 

When he finally looked up, there was fear glittering in his eyes. 

“Fuck, Jet, fuck, my fucking—” 

He bolted past Jet. 

Jet barely had enough presence of mind to dash outside after him. "Party! Don't!"

Party shoved Ghoul aside. “Wait!” 

Jet made a desperate lunge for him and snagged him by the arm before he could reach Cola and the baby. “You had your chance to say goodbye, now shut it or you’ll jeopardize the whole thing!” he hissed. Seriously, what the hell?

Party threw him off. “Not saying goodbye,” he bit out, eyes glittering like they had been when he’d run out to meet him yesterday morning. Only he didn’t just look distraught, he looked _angry_ , and Jet had no idea where he might go off this time.

Party took a stand, blocking Cola’s path to the van and Dr. D. Creating a weird standoff between all of them nearly as complicated as that of last night’s clap. “She’s not going anywhere.”

Poor Cola cradled the girl warily, trapped in the crossfire.

Jet’s heart leapt at Party’s words, foolishly—and then he remembered their earlier discussion. 

A few days. Party meant a few days.

“This is our best shot,” Jet said. “She’s sleeping, everything’s packed. A little more time won’t make that big of a difference.”

“I said, she’s not going.”

“Party, _don’t_.” Jet didn’t want to hear this. 

“I mean it. Ever.”

Ghoul and Kobra stared at Party like he’d dyed his hair blue.

Jet was caught off guard by the rage that swept through him, sandstormlike. He was _furious_ , he was shaking with the effort of fighting the sudden urge to wring Party’s neck. How could he say such cruelly thoughtless, rash things he couldn’t possibly mean? 

Jet could take the brooding and the yelling matches and the theatrics, but he couldn’t take this.

“Fuck you, Party,” he said. It came out sounding strangled. “This isn’t a joke.”

Party stared him down. “I’m not joking.”

Impossibly, Jet felt a spark of hope prick in his chest.

He crushed the feeling. Party had finally lost it. Jet had always been afraid it would happen, deep down. He just hadn’t thought it would be so soon.

“Poison…” Jet said. Party answered better to Poison when he got this way. “We…we have to let her go.”

“Over my dead body!”

“Son—” started Dr. D.

“Damn it, Doc, _that’s our kid_.” Party stabbed a finger at the sleeping girl in Cola’s arms, voice dropped to a protective growl. He whirled to face the rest of them. “Tell him.”

His voice faltered, turning what would have been a demand into a strangely vulnerable plea. Against all hope. Absent of the uncanny powers of persuasion he usually could have bent on them.

“Poison, this is insane,” Ghoul said hoarsely. But his gaze flickered over to the child sleeping in Cola’s arms.

Kobra just stood there, stricken.

Cola, who’d been carefully pretending not to exist until now, began, “Uh, I think—”

“Cállate la última Cola en el desierto o te voy a dar una hostia que te vas a morir de hambre en el aire!” Jet snarled in one breath. Cola wisely snapped his jaw shut with an audible click despite having no idea what Jet said, and Jet rounded on Party again. “Pull. Yourself. Together.”

Jet would normally never dream of going after him like this in front of the other guys—there were some things you never said to Party unless you were alone, and there were some things you simply never said to Party at all—but all the emotion threatening to choke him came spilling out instead.

“Don’t fucking toy with her life like this. Don’t toy with your crew like this. Fucking think about the shit you’re saying for once in your godsdamned life.”

Party didn’t flinch.

“I have thought about it,” he said quietly. “We all have.” He looked around, daring any of them to say they hadn’t.

Kobra was fiddling with the straps on his glove. Ghoul had turned away, a trembling hand pressed to his brow.

The rest of Jet’s tirade caught in his throat.

Hijos de putas. It wasn’t just him.

Wha—

How long had they all be—

And none of them had breathed a word abo—

His brain was short-circuiting.

This…this was Party— _Party Poison_ , who valued his freedom more highly than anything in the world. Surely he didn’t understand what he’d be giving up. Kobra, either, who needed nearly perfect control to function—over himself, over his environment—or he’d freak out or shut down or Witch knew what else. Ghoul was the biggest enigma of all, a damn-everybody-else lone wolf with some terrible unspoken history he was still grappling with, one that had left him with a knack for children and a deep-seated contempt for them. 

And so what. Just because they had thought about it didn’t mean they had come to anything but the conclusion Jet was still struggling to accept himself as the only right one—that she would be better off without them.

He wouldn’t get his hopes up now. He wouldn’t.

“Son,” Dr. D tried addressing Party again. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

Party advanced on him. “What if they are looking for her, Doc? You think she’ll be safe? Anywhere without us?”

He spun on his heel and in two strides had reached Cola and snatched the girl from him.

The girl’s eyes flew open and she let out a startled noise, but when she found herself in Party’s familiar arms she didn’t start crying. 

Dr. D started, “The risks—”

“We know the risks.” Jet cut him off. Was that really his voice? It was. Shit. 

It was true. Anything there could possibly be to worry about, after this week Jet could guarantee he had worried it.

The liabilities, the dangers, the sacrifices. Every last one. If anyone was worth all that, it was her.

Fuck, he was getting his hopes up after all.

It scared the hell out of him. He was also unable to remember having ever wanted anything so much. 

Party clutched the girl’s head protectively to his chest with one paint-stained hand, at once both gentle and fierce. Like he was terrified an entire army of dracs was going to come swarming in from nowhere and tear her away.

“We’re the only ones,” he said grimly. “We’re the only ones who can keep her safe.”

Phoenix Witch, Jet couldn’t do this with the girl watching them. So quiet, so trusting. Entirely unaware of how her fate was in balance.

“She needs…” Ghoul whispered. His hand was still over his eyes. Refusing to look at any of them, or maybe unable to. “She needs a family, Poison, not…”

“ _What are we, then?_ ” Party demanded helplessly. Was that a tear on his cheek?

This would change everything. Their whole lives, the whole world on the brink of flipping upside down. Jet could almost feel the horizon tilting under him.

Party planted his feet.

“A vote,” he said. “All or nothing.”

Dr. D sat back in his wheelchair, lips pressed together pensively. 

No one spoke. 

Party was looking at Jet. 

Despite every emotion in his gut screaming _ours ours ours_ , a sudden twinge of doubt crept through him. 

Could they really do this? Raise a kid? Keep her out of harm’s way? 

Was this best for her? 

He’d been trying so hard until this moment to convince himself it wasn’t, that suddenly faced with the possibility now, he didn’t know what to think. 

Damn those pleading hazel eyes of Party’s. 

Party Poison was a burner one day, a crashqueen the next, a rebel leader whenever the mood struck him; taking up one divine mantle that he’d imagined for himself and abandoning it just as quickly when the next vision came brighter. 

Party’s impulsive need to play guardian angel, protect this child—was it any more than that? 

Jet desperately wanted to believe that it was.

Even if it wasn’t, this wasn’t about Party anyway. It was about the girl. A baby girl, a girl with no family and a target on her back. Damn it all to hell, it was about a girl Jet loved. 

He tried to say something but his voice wouldn’t work. All he could do was nod mutely. 

And just like that, he’d handed over his heart for the rest of his crew to break. 

Jet couldn’t bear to look at the baby anymore, watching them with such innocence, nor Party and his wild, pleading eyes. He glanced upward, blinking hard. 

He felt sick. This was it. Kobra wouldn’t have to say a word; Ghoul was going to shoot Party down, and that would be the end of it. 

A crow was circling, high overhead. A bad omen, surely. Crows could go either way, depending on who you asked. 

“Crew’s got to stick together.” Ghoul’s voice. Party inhaled sharply. 

Jet whipped around to face Ghoul. Sarcasm, _now?_ More cruel jokes? 

“She’s crew now, ain’t she?” Ghoul said. 

He was hugging himself tightly, every muscle taut like he was fighting the urge to turn tail and run for the dunes. But he set his jaw and met Jet’s gaze, steady and sure. 

Jet tried not to gape. Who was this guy and what had he done with Fun Ghoul? 

Party’s wild eyes darted to Kobra. 

Kobra was still looking down at his boots, toeing them together in the dust. 

It might not be reluctance, Jet knew. Kobra needed time for shit like this, that was all. And after what had just come out of Ghoul's mouth, Jet was ready to believe in anything. Miracles. 

Jet could almost see Kobra’s analytical brain at work, racing through all the factors, all the possibilities. He had his thinking face on, the slightly frowny one he got when he was scouring a computer code for bugs or calculating good and bad outcomes in a video game he was playing for the first time. 

Jet held his breath, praying that Party wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t pressure him. He didn’t want Kobra to just go along with it because of the rest of them. Not just because his brother wanted him to. 

Kobra raised his head.

“Hm. We might as well,” he deadpanned, with a wave at the back of the van that had all the girl’s stuff crammed into it. “We already have all this shit.”

A strangled noise from Ghoul, a sort of sob turned into a laugh halfway, and with an unsteady grin he practically bounced over to Party to grab the sides of his head in a weird, Ghoul-style not-hug. “You’re fuckin’ deranged, you know that? Deranged.”

“I know!” Party was laughing too. “We’re the derangedest motherfuckers to ever set foot in the desert. Witch help us.”

“We’re gonna need it,” Jet said shakily, finding his voice. “Welcome home, corazoncita.”

“Oh boy. We’re really in the shit now,” Ghoul joked. He slipped off the headphones that were dwarfing the girl’s head, letting them fall to the ground, and leaned in with her sandwiched between him and Party to pepper her neck with kisses, making her squeal happily.

“Hey, no backsies,” warned Party. 

“No! No. Backsies,” Ghoul said in between kisses. “Never. Backsies.”

Holy fuck, this was really happening. “Pinch me,” Jet said to Kobra, who promptly hauled off and whacked him. “Ow!”

“ _Just for a week_ , he said,” Kobra said, ducking out of reach of Jet’s automatic retaliatory shove. “ _Seven days_ , he said.” He flashed a rare smile at him and ran to join the others. 

So that’s what surprise looked like on Dr. D. Dumbfoundment, more like. 

Jet just grinned back stupidly at him, like, _Can you believe this?_ He couldn’t help it. 

Cola sidled over to Dr. D. “What just happened.”

“Haven’t the dustiest,” Dr. D. said. “I swear this wasn’t my intention.”

“I believe you,” Cola said mildly, unable to tear his eyes away from Better Living Industry’s four Most Wanted fawning and cooing over a baby. 

Dr. D cleared his throat to address them. “If you’re sure, boys, I ain’t gonna try to convince you otherwise. But you better be damn sure.”

Party met his stare unflinchingly. “Sure as the sun.”

“Then she’s your problem now. Don’t come crawling back tomorrow beggin’ me to take her off your hands.”

“Not for the fucking world,” Party murmured breathlessly, already back to staring at the girl like she was the most intricate piece of art he’d ever seen.

Jet tore himself away from the other three of his crew—other _four_ , holy shit—to go over to where Dr. D was watching. “Slight change of plans, huh,” he said, with a shaky laugh.

“Seems that way. Here, lend a hand with this contraption. You really okay with this? She’s not some plaything you can ditch when you get fed up with her.”

How dare he. “If that were an option, it would have happened on day one,” Jet spat out, wrestling down the chairlift on the side of the van with a little more force than necessary. “Believe me.”

“Weapons at the door, Star.” Dr. D chuckled easily. Oh. He’d just been pulling Jet’s leg. Or testing him. “I know you know. But do they? Does Poison?”

“They surprised me, this week,” Jet said slowly. “All of them. We…I think we’re going to be okay. Even if the Batts are after her.” He was surprised himself, how much he believed it.

“If they are…” Dr. D trailed off. Then, seeming to decide this was no time for dark predictions, he finished lightly, “...well, Poison won’t want for action.”

“True,” Jet admitted, huffing a laugh. 

He stole a glance at the others. Party was transferring the girl to Ghoul so he could have a proper turn at smothering her with kisses. 

Jet wasn’t ever going to get used to seeing them like that, he didn’t think. What infatuated fools they all were.

“Truth is, it’s gonna be plenty dangerous for her regardless,” Dr. D went on. “You’ll have a hell of a time keeping her alive, let alone alive and well.” 

“I know.”

Dr. D got his chair secured in the backseat. “But I’d also put my foot down if I didn’t think you were up to it.”

It was going to be a ride, that was for certain, this abrupt 180 in their priorities—from renegades to guardians first and foremost, and still hunted fugitives besides. But Ghoul was amazing at stopping her from fussing, and Party could keep her entertained for hours on end, Jet could get her to sleep faster than anyone, and Kobra, of all people, could make her laugh.

Hell, between the four of them combined, they might make something resembling a good parent. 

“Ever need any advice, just holler,” Dr. D went on. “Though I think you’ll get along all right. Think she’ll be good for you.”

Jet’s brow wrinkled. “Don’t you mean the other way around?”

Dr. D laughed. “Nope.” 

“Yo, Jet! Quit yakking with Social Services and help us get her stuff out of the van,” said Party.

Dr. D nodded in their direction. “Go on, then.”

Jet grinned and moved to obey. Gods, he couldn’t stop smiling, he was an insufferable sap and he couldn’t bring himself to give a flying fuck about it. “Keep runnin’, Doc. Thanks for everything.”

“Oh no. Thank _you_ ,” Doc said dryly. “Looks like she’s in good hands, Cola. Shall we?”

“Hands, anyway,” Cola said, still staring. “Uh. Yeah. Coming.”

In a gesture of _extreme_ generosity and goodwill, Ghoul held the girl out to Cola just long enough for him to plant a goodbye kiss on her head. 

“Don’t be a stranger,” Jet told Cola, pulling the last box out of the back and closing the hatch. He hadn’t gotten a chance yet to thank him for rescuing their girl in the first place. 

“Oh, I won’t,” said Cola. “I’ll pop in every now and then so you can practice your Spanish insults on me.”

“Right. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be.” Cola waved bye-bye at the baby. “See you around, sweetheart. You keep these hooligans in line, okay?”

“No fear,” Party said with a lopsided grin. “Trust me, she’s got us bastards all wrapped around her little finger.”

“That’s alright then,” Cola grinned back, and gave Kobra a nod before rolling Dr. D’s door shut for him and getting into the driver’s seat. “Keep runnin’.”

“Oh, near forgot. Poison,” said Dr. D, and Party looked up from the baby, startled. “Something for you.” He tossed it out to him through his open window. 

Party caught it and took a closer look. Then he started to laugh.

“What is it?” said Jet.

Still laughing, Party held up a record needle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last official chapter, but stick around for the epilogue going up tomorrow! :)  
> ~  
> Spanish notes  
> ¿Cómo estás? = How are you? (Of course Dr. D speaks Spanish too—enough to get by, at least)  
> Un poco cansado = a little tired  
> Pasta la veesta = Party MEANS 'hasta le vista' (goodbye), but hey, it's Party  
> Buen viaje, corazoncita = safe journey, little heart  
> Cállate la última Cola en el desierto o te voy a dar una hostia que te vas a morir de hambre en el aire = ok here we go lol. Cállate is "shut up." And there is apparently a common Spanish saying that goes "Creerse la última coca-cola del desierto"; i.e. “To think of yourself as the last Coca-Cola in the desert” and it means you think you’re better than everyone else, or you think you’re hot stuff. The next bit is another common phrase meaning "I will give you such a slap that you will die of hunger in the air." Put it all together and loosely translated, you have "Shut up, Mr. Know-It-All [only that bit's a pun], or I'll slap you into next week." So not only is it an insult, it's a punsult as well. Bit of a reach, maybe, but in Jet's defense he was hella mad haha.  
> Hijos de putas = sons of b*tches. You should recognize this one by now lol
> 
> (The idea for Party’s epiphany grew out of a hc someone posted on tumblr once — I have no idea who it was — about Party leaving the lower half of the diner walls blank for the Girl's art because she could reach it. If you know who the op was let me know and I'll credit them!)
> 
> Thoughts, questions, headcanons, memes? I'd love to hear from you! I'm @kyptidkat on tumblr, come say hello!


	9. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we get into it, my two cents on the whole Momma Jet thing which recently popped up again on tumblr and a lot of people seem to hate: I hope I addressed it satisfactorily here! The other guys drop it after this exchange; Jet seems like more of the vodka aunt type to me, anyway. lol. Still though, I’m a little confused as to why people have such an issue with it in the first place, because who says you can’t be momma and still be a badass?? The two aren’t mutually exclusive?? But just to explain, in the context of this scene (which I'd already written exactly as it appears below, before the discourse resurfaced), I thought it was amusing to leave in (and likely something the guys would actually tease him about just because he's the slightly more responsible one among the four) but I had also already acknowledged in the text that yeah, discourse aside, it is kind of disrespectful to the girl’s mom so Jet doesn't like the nickname anyway, ya know? Ok that's all, thanks for coming to my ted talk — now on to the fluff!

“Look at us. So fuckin’ domestic,” Ghoul snickered, looking down at himself. He was wearing a pink checkered apron he’d found on a hook in the kitchen to heat up dinner—not so much to keep the food off of him (though he was a notoriously messy cook) as much as to keep the grime on his clothes out of the food.

“Utshay the uckfay upay," Kobra said hastily.

Now that the girl was parroting everything and Jet was enforcing the swear jar, they had mostly resorted to pig latin when necessary. Kobra had adapted fast and could switch seamlessly now when she was in earshot without thinking twice about it. Party was getting pretty good at it himself. Ghoul, however, was still a work in progress.

Jet had a feeling the rule wasn’t going to last long regardless, but he appreciated the effort.

He glanced up from the laser-burnt shirt he was patching—he was only just now getting around to it, nearly a month after the clap, which said something about how hectic life had been—to take in the scene.

Ghoul was stirring his stewpot and humming off-key along to Bowie’s _Heroes_ that was playing on the newly repaired jukebox in the corner. Whatever he was making, it smelled amazing. (One of the many perks of staking claim to a diner was that there were still some old spices in the back cupboards.) Kobra was on the couch with his hands under the girl’s arms to steady her as she stood on his legs, and was patiently letting her try to grab his sunglasses. He’d been acting absent again today, aimlessly hanging around the diner like a ghost, so a while ago Jet had finally sat him down and plopped the girl into his lap in hopes that she might cheer him up with the added bonus that Jet could have his hands free for a bit to get some actual work done. Kobra didn’t look happy, exactly—Kobra rarely did—but at least he looked a little less like he was astral projecting to Mars or somewhere. Party was sketching nearby, curled up in a booth with a pad of paper and stealing glances at the girl for reference as he scribbled.

This was their life now. Jet still couldn’t believe it sometimes.

“Turn her around, I’m not trying to draw the back of her head,” Party ordered.

Kobra tried, but the girl started wiggling so vigorously he gave up trying to keep hold of her and put her down on the floor. “Off you go, then. Go to mom.”

“ _You_ utshay the uckfay,” Jet said, setting his sewing needle aside just in time to catch her as she toddled over at breakneck speed. (She’d taken her first steps a few days ago and everyone had been there. The elation in the room had been tangible, much the same feeling they’d experienced the time they’d first _clicked_ as a crew during a clap and beaten formidable odds.) “We are not doing that.”

“I like it!” Party flashed a wicked grin. “Momma Jet. Suits you. See, you’ve even developed the parental reflexes.” 

Jet winced a little. Party didn’t mean to be insensitive, but wasn’t calling any of them _mama_ kind of disrespectful to the girl’s mother? They couldn’t replace her, and none of them were trying to. 

He didn’t know if it was sadder that the girl still had occasional bouts of homesickness, or that they were becoming less frequent and she was starting to forget that this hadn’t always been her home, her family. She was young enough that in a few years she probably wouldn’t remember her mother at all. 

Jet didn’t want to ruin the light mood, though, so he just shot back, “Well, keep in mind that turnabout’s fair play, _father,_ ” and Kobra and Ghoul hooted in mock horror. 

Party looked suitably scandalized. “Touché. You’re right, we aren’t doing that.”

“Yo, Uncle Snake Boy, open up.” Ghoul came over with a spoonful of something that, frankly, looked disgusting. Most of Ghoul’s concoctions did.

Kobra clamped his jaw shut. “Why me?” he said through his teeth.

“Because you’re the pickiest, and if you like it everyone else will.”

Kobra glanced appealingly at Party, but he was no help. “Eat the damn stew, K.”

“What’s in i—mfph.”

Ghoul shoved it into his mouth as if he was the baby. “Rule one of my cooking: don’t ask.”

Knowing Ghoul, the main ingredient was probably roadkill or something.

Kobra chewed, scowling. “’S fine.” Which, being Kobra, could either mean he loved it or it was the worst thing he’d ever tasted, just go away please. “ _Auntie_ Ghoul.”

Back in the kitchen, Ghoul didn’t hear the last jab. “Dinner is served! And after that there’s a surprise.” 

A surprise? Oh, shiny. Unlike his food, Ghoul’s surprises were rarely good.

They congregated in the kitchen and Jet wrestled the girl into her high chair. 

They didn’t used to eat together. Sometimes, sure, if they happened to be foraging in the kitchen at the same time. They’d discovered recently, however, that establishing a feeding schedule was apparently a good way to stop the girl from having hunger tantrums seemingly at random. (Imagine that.) And so they’d been attempting to make something resembling proper meals and stop whatever they were in the middle of long enough to make sure she got fed and grab a bite themselves while they were at it.

The toddler banged her spoon on her tray impatiently. Jet was going to have to adjust that chair and tray soon to give her more room. She was almost too big for it.

There was a height chart scribbled in sharpie on the doorframe now, in fact. Much to Ghoul’s chagrin as second shortest only to the girl, Kobra had insisted all of them get measured too—probably because he was the tallest if you didn’t count Jet’s hair. (And hell, Jet wasn’t quite sure how old Kobra was, but the kid could very well still be growing himself.) Party hadn’t been too excited about the new tradition either, though he’d complied after Jet had finally agreed to let him keep his boots on to do it. 

Neither did Party seem too excited about about the fact that he was now apparently target practice. Once served, the girl opted against eating the food on her tray in favor of flinging it at him. 

Party ruefully wiped a splatter of stew off his cheek. Ghoul pointed and cackled, only to be the next victim of friendly fire as a glob of impressive size landed splat on his favorite _fuck your crew_ tshirt.

“Rude. How come _she’s_ allowed to throw food and I’m not?” Ghoul grumbled, scraping off what he could and licking it from his fingers. “That’s an unfair advantage.”

“Baby: 2. Party and Ghoul: 0.” Kobra held up his hand to the girl for a high five like he’d been trying to teach her.

She obliged enthusiastically.

Kobra surveyed his now gooey leather glove with disgust. “I have regrets.”

“Karma’s a bitch,” snickered Party.

“JAR!” everyone else yelled.

“Oh mother…uckerfay.” Party got up to slam a carbon into the coffee tin. “Seriously though, nevermind what she calls us. What’re we going to call _her?_ ”

Blank faces.

“I mean…” Jet said at last. “She should get to decide for herself, shouldn’t she? Once she’s older?”

“Yeah but, what about now?” Party pointed out. “We gotta call her something.”

“Hmm.” Jet frowned. He had a point. 

“Missile,” Party said with a grin, fully aware he’d get shot down.

Jet facepalmed. “We are _not_ nicknaming her after a member of your favorite band, Party. What about just, Killjoy? Joy for short, maybe?”

“Nah.”

“Kiddo?”

“Got one.” Party pointed a thumb at Kobra.

“Well, Jet knows my suggestion,” Ghoul said, smirking at Jet.

“ _No_ ,” Jet said firmly, but he laughed. (Early on, once Ghoul had taken a more hands-on role with the girl—and got saddled with the diaper duty that went along with it—it had taken several days for Jet to get him to stop fondly referring to her as his little ‘shit machine.’ “She’s gonna start answering to that if you don’t quit,” he’d threatened finally. “Eh, I’ve heard worse killjoy names,” Ghoul had replied with his signature grin, but thankfully Jet didn’t hear him say it again after that.)

“Does it really matter?” Kobra said.

“He has a point,” said Ghoul. “We all call her different shi….”

Everyone leaned forward.

Ghoul glared at them. “Ahem. _Things._ We all call her different _things_ , anyway.”

Everyone sat back again. 

“Isn’t that confusing for her?” Party said. 

“She knows when she’s being talked about,” Ghoul pointed out. He started ticking nicknames off on his fingers and the baby perked up immediately. “Girlie, Babygirl, Half-Pint, Sunshine, Sunbeam...” He leaned in closer with each one until his face was centimeters away from hers. “Sweetheart, Shortstack, Princess, Whippersnapper, Put-That-Down, What’s-In-Your-Mouth, Get-Back-Here…”

“Okay, okay! I get it, it’s a moot point,” Party said. “Just as well, I guess.”

“'xactly.” Ghoul pretended to bite at the girl’s nose with a loud snap of teeth, making her shriek with delight, and stood up. “Surprise time, c’mon, I wanna try this out...” 

Jet had already had plenty of surprises the past month. He wasn't sure he could handle many more, though he guessed he'd have to start getting used to it. 

“You ever regret it?” Jet had asked Party yesterday. 

“Hm?” Party had said. He'd been adding some final detailing onto his mural with a small brush. The girl was strapped to his shoulders in a backpack Jet had modified into a carrier, her plump cheek smushed into the back of Party’s neck as she dozed. The day before, the little genius had figured out how to unclip the dinosaur leash, so any other method of trying to keep her contained at this point was pretty much futile. 

“You know. Taking her in. All of it.”

Party’s face was unreadable. “Do you?”

Jet pressed his lips together. The past few weeks had been a whirlwind and he hadn’t had the time to reflect on much of anything, really. 

Not everything had changed. They still had their spats and disagreements, but they were learning to have them away from her or, sometimes, for her sake, abstain from them altogether—which was completely unprecedented. And they all got antsy fairly often, even Jet, and so they did their best to divvy up shifts when they had to so they could get their cabin fever out of their system. Four-person missions were still going to be off the radar for a while, though. 

Of course, they’d also regain more of their freedom as the girl grew. The guys were already impatient to bring her to her first this or that. Kobra wanted her to see the Crashtrack, Party wouldn’t stop talking about taking her to her first Mad Gear concert, and Ghoul had brought up the Halloween bonfire and fireworks show about a million times. 

Jet was just glad that under Party’s patient care (Party, patient. It still blew his mind), she had gotten over her fear of the Trans Am and they could finally bring her along on their errands without reshuffling everyone’s schedules to make sure one of them could stay with her. 

The public reaction so far had been...interesting. Jet himself tried to keep a low profile; he’d always been well respected among desertborn joys at least, but he wasn’t a big fan of the fact that he’d become something of a celebrity since the Venom Brothers started running with him and then the whole Fab Four business had elevated them all to legends. 

Of course he was fucking proud of his crew—they were a damn good one—and yet that level of fame that went along with it and the tough guy image he had to maintain for the sake of their reputation was a bit much for him, sometimes. 

And so he’d wondered, at first, if the Fabulous Four wouldn’t become a laughingstock once word got out they had taken in a ward. 

But apparently, the four of them were still intimidating enough even with a toddler in tow that the worse he’d noticed was some incredulous whispering that always promptly stopped with a single glance from him in the direction it came from. 

“No,” Jet said truthfully. He gave Party a self-deprecating smile. “Now, if I’d had more than ten seconds of free time since then to think it over, I might come to a different conclusion.”

“Don’t talk like that.” 

“Relax, I’m joking.”

Party wasn’t. 

“Shit, Jet,” he said softly, pulling his brush away from the wall. Looking down at it, rolling it between his fingers. “I still have nightmares about it.”

Taken aback, Jet didn’t respond at first. Party wasn’t one to volunteer information like that. 

“About what?” he ventured. 

“Letting her go. Fuck, Jet, I almost let them take her, I almost—” 

“You didn’t,” Jet reminded him. “She’s not going anywhere.”

“I didn’t even realize what I was doing...until you said—” Party’s paint-streaked fingers trailed the edge of the mural. 

Soon, once she could stand more steadily on her own and coordinate handling crayons or fingerpaints at the same time, the girl could doodle her own art, right there in the wallspace left bare beneath his. 

Jet may have pointed it out, but Party had been the one who stopped Cola and Doc from taking her away. It was only because of his impulsivity—his insufferable impulsivity that usually made Jet’s life a living hell—that they still had their girl at all. 

Jet’s own shit-that’s-our-kid epiphany had happened so gradually and quietly he’d barely noticed. He’d just looked back and realized he couldn’t imagine their lives without her, anymore. If he had to pinpoint a single moment, it was probably during the clap, and he’d been far too rattled to process it then. 

Party’s revelation, however, he’d seen happen in front of his own eyes. 

“The writing was literally on the wall, and I almost missed it,” Party mused. “I really played myself, huh.” He reached back and rubbed a thumb over the girl’s foot hanging out of the carrier—gentle, so as not to disturb her from her slumber, but needing to touch her, reassure himself she was still here. “If I hadn’t—”

“Party.” Jet said. “She’s here now. And safe. That’s all that matters.” In a lighter tone, to hopefully nudge Party out of what could easily turn into an all-afternoon brooding session, he added, “Anyway, you never answered my question.”

Party tapped his chin thoughtfully with the entirely wrong end of his brush, leaving purple splotches. 

Then he went back to painting. “Not for a damn second.” 

“You say that now, but just wait till she gets a fever or a stomach bug,” Jet teased. “Or starts being able to climb shit, or learns how to use ‘no’ and starts her terrible twos for real…” Yikes, he’d better stop there, or he was going to start worrying about all of that himself. 

Party still wasn’t amused. “What, not feelin’ up to the challenge?" he said mildly. "If you can’t survive a damn baby for this long you’re not the crew I thought you were."

“Oh, screw you,” Jet said, not without fondness, and had left him to his painting without telling him about the splotches. 

“Jet, c’mon, bring the kid.” Ghoul broke Jet out of his reverie. He was herding the others over to the corner where he’d been messing around with something for most of the afternoon. 

Jet hauled the girl out of her chair so she could see, too. 

“Ta da!” Ghoul beamed. 

Party beat Jet to the question. “What is it.”

“A rocker!” said Ghoul, a little insulted that he couldn’t tell.

“What’s the thing sticking off it?”

“Pulled the motor out of that industrial mixer in the kitchen. Nobody was usin’ it.” Ghoul dragged the power cord over to an outlet. “It’s gonna be great. Hands free and everything. Put her right to sleep, I bet.” He made grabby hands at Jet. “Baby. Gimme.”

Jet eyed the hammock-like contraption. It consisted of what used to be an old metal cookie sheet, maybe, beaten into a shallow petal shape and lined with blankets, which was suspended from an four-legged A-frame stand. The motor beside it had wires running up to the attaching beam across the top. 

He clutched the Girl a little tighter. “Let’s see it first.”

“What, you don’t trust my engineering skills?” Ghoul mocked. “Fine. See for yourself.” He threw his hand out. “Baby and gentlemen, I give you: The Ghoulcradle Deluxe 1.0!” He flipped the switch.

There was a buzz, and the swing jerked.

Then it started to spin, whizzing around in complete 360s. Faster and faster. The motor started smoking. A loose screw whizzed past Jet’s head. 

“Shi—uh, itshay, itshay!” Ghoul scrambled to shut it down.

“Centrifugal force,” Kobra deadpanned in the stunned silence that followed. “Shiny. She won’t even fall out.” 

Jet found his voice. “Absolutely not. Much appreciated, but I think it’s back to the drawing board for you.” 

“And back to the crib tonight for _you_ ,” Party said, taking the girl from Jet. (It was a nice crib too, if Jet thought so himself. Her old cardboard box had long since disintegrated from use.) “Stick to explosives maybe, Ghoulie.”

“Yeah.” Ghoul surveyed the rocker from hell glumly. “Yeah, maybe so.” 

“Beddy-bye time, sweetheart. Whatcha in the mood for tonight?” Party asked the girl, giving her a smooch on the cheek. “More Tales of Sir Punch-A-Lot by yours truly?” 

“I don’t think that actually helps her fall asleep, Party,” Jet said quickly. Party had a whole cast of characters going, and would leap around the room acting out imaginary swordfights and doing the dialogue into an empty echoey tin can to mimic the sound of talking inside a helmet with the visor down. 

Ghoul took the baby away from Party. “Hey, no skipping. It’s our turn and we’re doing Where the Wild Things Are, it’s her favorite.” 

“It’s someone’s favorite all right,” Kobra said. Cherri had swung by the other day with a whole stack of children’s books for her from his library, and Ghoul had gravitated to that one immediately. 

Ghoul glared at him and held her out. “Shaddup. Bedtime routine.” 

Kobra bent down obediently to plant a kiss on the top of her head. (He may not have been the touchy-feely type, but he made an exception for her.) Once she got one from Jet too—Party’d already gotten his in—Ghoul whisked her off to his blanket fort. 

Jet bit back a smile. It was a contrasting scene, compared with their first week. Doc had been right—she _was_ good for them. It was so weird to watch the guys interact with each other these days. Sure, they still talked a lot of shit, but the affection and gentleness they showed the girl had begun to spill out into their interactions with each other without them noticing. 

She had unified them already, in the short time they’d had her. Glued them together with dirt and stew and sticky baby kisses in a way they’d never have bonded on their own. 

Maybe she'd just needed to bring out the worst in them before she could bring out the best. 

She drew out Party’s quiet side, a side Jet had previously doubted Party possessed at all. There were scribbly drawings covering the refrigerator now, courtesy of Party’s coloring sessions with her, and he’d even sing her to sleep at naptime occasionally. (He didn’t know any lullabies, though, so the girl more often than not drifted off to the, uh, dulcet melody of Black Dragon Fighting Society or Mastas of Ravencroft.)

Her and Kobra were pretty good buddies, too. He’d seemed to have built up somewhat of a tolerance for the shrieking, though he wasn’t above using her old headphones if she got too noisy. And since he was always up anyway, Kobra had taken over the night shift with her when she refused to go to sleep. Once she did, however, she actually slept most soundly snuggled up with Jet, which Jet didn’t mind one bit. 

And she brought out a gentleness in Ghoul that still surprised Jet. He still caught Ghoul storming off after a play session with her, sometimes, unable to endure some invisible weight on his shoulders any longer, but afterwards Jet saw him being even more tender with her, almost apologetic, and Jet knew better than to pry. 

They were both spitfires, the two of them, and Jet knew they’d be a formidable mischief-making duo once the girl was a little older. It was no wonder they got along so well; in a lot of ways Ghoul still acted like a giant kid himself. He took her extremely seriously and would crawl around under the tables with her, playfight and let her win, listen solemnly to her nonsensical babble. 

In fact, Jet had caught him rambling at her just as often as she babbled at him, while she was still too young to understand. Too young to judge or pity. This morning Jet had nearly walked into the kitchen when he’d heard Ghoul talking softly—to himself, Jet thought at first—and ventured a glance inside. 

Ghoul was walking aimlessly around the room gently bouncing the toddler, who was scooped up snugly with her back against his chest.

“...they were angels, both of em,” he was saying, head bent down to her little ear. “Not that I was around that much to know. But you,” he went on, suddenly pretending to be cross, “For there only being one of you, you’re definitely twice the troub…” he caught sight of Jet and stopped short.

“You feed her?” Jet said, deciding to pretend like he had just gotten there and hadn’t been eavesdropping for an uncomfortably long time.

“Yeah. Just tryin’ to wind her down a bit before, uh, n-a-p-t-i-m-e,” Ghoul said. 

They were all getting to know her pretty well, and if there was anything she was more uncooperative about than cars and baths, it was naps. You had to be sneaky about it and make her think they were her idea.

“I’ll try to put her down, if you want,” Jet offered. “You’ve had her all morning.”

“Nah, ‘s okay. We were just going.” Ghoul gave the girl a squeeze. “Ready for some snuggles and definitely no shuteye, half-pint?”

The girl’s massive yawn was answer enough. Ghoul chuckled and brushed past Jet without meeting his eyes, and Jet reminded himself again: No questions.

It didn’t matter to Jet that it had been easier before, without a kid to constantly be concerned about. It was worth it, even when she nearly gave him a heart attack every time she got into something she shouldn’t be or toddled headfirst into a chair. Nights were no better—several times a week he would jolt awake, sick with worry over nothing, worry that wouldn’t subside until he saw for himself she was safe asleep in her crib or curled up with one of the others. 

(“Will it always be like this?” he’d asked Dr. D after the most recent time it happened, clutching his transmitter a bit desperately. It was three in the morning, and Dr. D had just laughed at him. “ _Oh, Star. It only gets worse._ ” “Thanks,” Jet had sighed, and clicked it off.) 

At least no more dracs had come across the diner. Yet. Jet wasn’t going to complain about that, though Party had begun sneaking frequent wistful glances at his yellow mask and drumming his fingers on his leg. 

For Party, however, that was a pretty mild case of restlessness, and Jet set aside his worry that Party was going to snap and run off to start a bloodbath somewhere. 

The girl had probably saved each of their lives already, in a way, just by existing. She made them all a little kinder, a little more careful. Less reckless. They were needed now in a way they hadn’t been before. Gave them a purpose they hadn’t known they were missing. A hope. Someone to live for besides themselves. Someone to come home to. 

Where was everybody? Jet glanced around the diner, now littered with as many toys and baby gear as weaponry and equipment. Everyone had vanished. 

“He sailed off, through night and day, and in and out of weeks and almost over a year, to _where the wild things are_.” Ghoul’s voice, hushed and dramatic, coming from the kitchen. 

There was rustling, too. An awful lot of rustling. 

“...And when he came to the place where the wild things are, they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed him their terrible claws.” The narration paused briefly for an excessive amount of playful growling and snarling noises and giggling. “Til Max said, ‘Be still!’ and tamed them with a magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once…”

Okay, Jet needed in on this. 

He went to investigate, and immediately gave up on suppressing a smile any longer. 

The beam of a flashlight was lighting up Ghoul’s blanket fort from the inside, making the whole thing glow, and there wasn’t one, nor two, but _three_ pairs of boots poking out of it.

“...and they were frightened, and called him the most wild thing of all…”

Jet knew the desert was a harsh place—even harsher than before, it seemed, now that his eyes were opened to all the extra dangers it posed for a child so young—but it was so much brighter with her in it. 

He wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

As Party would say, not for the fucking world. 

Jet gave Kobra’s boot a nudge. “Scooch over.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming along for the ride! I appreciate every single one of you so much and all your kind comments and kudos and messages, it means everything to me!
> 
> Thoughts, fave lines, questions, memes, headcanons, whatever? Pop into my tumblr inbox @kryptidkat anytime - I always love hearing from you!


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